pickle

noun

1. (Australia, Canada, US, countable, uncountable)A cucumber preserved in a solution, usually a brine or a vinegar syrup.

   “A pickle goes well with a hamburger.”

2. (countable, in-plural, often, uncountable)Any vegetable preserved in vinegar and consumed as relish.
3. (UK, countable, uncountable)A sweet, vinegary pickled chutney popular in Britain.
4. (countable, uncountable)The brine used for preserving food.

   “This tub is filled with the pickle that we will put the small cucumbers into.”

5. (countable, informal, uncountable)A difficult situation; peril.

   “The climber found himself in a pickle when one of the rocks broke off.”

   “I beg you, Miss Jones, to realize the pickle you're in.”

6. (countable, endearing, uncountable)A mildly mischievous loved one.

   “by degrees my little pickle (who, as I told you at the beginning of the story, was the most troublesome child I ever came across) turned into a very well-behaved young gentleman.”

   “... If you could get my little pickle to learn his multiplication table before you leave us, you shall have that musical box to take home with you.”

   “'And now,' she said, 'what about that kiss my little pickle was going to give his old Auntie?'”

7. (countable, uncountable)A rundown.

   “Jones was caught in a pickle between second and third.”

8. (uncountable)A children’s game with three participants that emulates a baseball rundown

   “The boys played pickle in the front yard for an hour.”

9. (countable, slang, uncountable)A penis.
10. (countable, slang, uncountable)A pipe for smoking methamphetamine.

    “Load some shards in that pickle.”

11. (countable, uncountable)A bath of dilute sulphuric or nitric acid, etc., to remove burnt sand, scale, rust, etc., from the surface of castings, or other articles of metal, or to brighten them or improve their colour.
12. (countable, uncountable)In an optical landing system, the hand-held controller connected to the lens, or apparatus on which the lights are mounted.
13. (Northern-England, Scotland)A kernel; a grain (of salt, sugar, etc.)
14. (Northern-England, Scotland)A small or indefinite quantity or amount (of something); a little, a bit, a few. Usually in partitive construction, frequently without "of"; a single grain or kernel of wheat, barley, oats, sand or dust.

    “[…] ill things are like guid—they baith come bit by bit, a pickle at a time […]”

    “I mind him well, and the burn we fished and the pickle things we took out, and your mother that played with us in her cutty sark, and not a shoe between us nor a bodle of money; but the green hills round us, and all we knew of the world that it lay beyond them.”

verb

1. (ergative, transitive)To preserve food (or sometimes other things) in a salt, sugar or vinegar solution.

   “We pickled the remainder of the crop.”

   “These cucumbers pickle very well.”

2. (transitive)To remove high-temperature scale and oxidation from metal with heated (often sulphuric) industrial acid.

   “The crew will pickle the fittings in the morning.”

3. To serialize.

   “You can now restore the pickled data. If you like, close your Python interpreter and open a new instance, to convince yourself […]”

   “To illustrate how this would work in practice, consider a field designed to store and retrieve a pickled copy of any arbitrary Python object.”

4. (historical)To pour brine over a person after flogging them, as a method of punishment.

   “On Wednesday 26 May, […] I had [an enslaved man] flogged and pickled and then made Hector shit in his mouth. […] In July, […] Gave [another enslaved man] a moderate whipping, pickled him well, made Hector shit in his mouth, […]”

   “Naval seamen could also be keel-hauled, ducked, pickled, and flogged around the fleet. [elsewhere, page 93, the book explains:] A pickled man had his flogged back washed with vinegar.”

5. (Northern-England, Scotland, ambitransitive)To eat sparingly.
6. (Northern-England, Scotland, ambitransitive)To pilfer.

name

1. A surname.