different between plight vs pickle

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: pl?t, IPA^(key): /pla?t/
• Rhymes: -a?t

Etymology 1

From Middle English plit (“fold, wrinkle, bad situation”), conflation of Middle English pliht, plight (“risky promise, peril”) (from Old English pliht "danger, risk") and Anglo-Norman plit, plyte (“fold, condition”), from Old French pleit (“condition, manner of folding”) (from Vulgar Latin *plictum, from Latin plicitum (“fold”)).

Noun

plight (plural plights)

1. A dire or unfortunate situation. [from 14th c.]
   • 2005, Lesley Brown, translating Plato, Sophist, 243c:

     Though we say we are quite clear about it and understand when someone uses the expression, unlike that other expression, maybe we're in the same plight with regard to them both.
2. (now rare) A (neutral) condition or state. [from 14th c.]
3. (obsolete) Good health. [14th–19th c.]
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.7:

     All wayes shee sought him to restore to plight, / With herbs, with charms, with counsel, and with teares […].

Translations

Etymology 2

From Middle English plight (“risk, danger”), from Old English pliht (“peril, risk, danger, damage, plight”), from Proto-West Germanic *plihti (“care, responsibility, duty”). A suffixed form of the root represented by Old English pleoh (“risk, danger, hurt, peril"; also "responsibility”) and pl?on (“to endanger, risk”). Akin to Old English plihtan (“to endanger, compromise”). Cognate with Scots plicht (“responsibility, plight”), Dutch plicht, Low German plicht (“duty”), German Pflicht (“duty”), Danish pligt (“duty”), Yiddish ??????? (flikht). More at pledge.

Noun

plight (plural plights)

1. (now chiefly dialectal) Responsibility for ensuing consequences; risk; danger; peril.
2. (now chiefly dialectal) An instance of danger or peril; a dangerous moment or situation.
3. (now chiefly dialectal) Blame; culpability; fault; wrong-doing; sin; crime.
4. (now chiefly dialectal) One's office; duty; charge.
5. (archaic) That which is exposed to risk; that which is plighted or pledged; security; a gage; a pledge.

Derived terms

• plightful
• plightly

Translations

Verb

plight (third-person singular simple present plights, present participle plighting, simple past and past participle plighted)

1. (transitive, now rare) To expose to risk; to pledge.
2. (transitive) Specifically, to pledge (one's troth etc.) as part of a marriage ceremony.
3. (reflexive) To promise (oneself) to someone, or to do something.
   • 1992, Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety, Harper Perennial 2007, p. 226:

     I ask what I have done to deserve it, one daughter hobnobbing with radicals and the other planning to plight herself to a criminal.

Derived terms

• plighter

Etymology 3

From Middle English plyghten, ply?ten, pley?ten, pleiten, pliten, from the noun (see below).

Verb

plight (third-person singular simple present plights, present participle plighting, simple past and past participle plighted)

1. (obsolete) To weave; to braid; to fold; to plait.

Etymology 4

From Middle English pli?t, plight, plyt, pleit, from Anglo-Norman pleit (“pleat, fold”). More at plait.

Noun

plight (plural plights)

2. (obsolete) A network; a plait; a fold; rarely a garment.

Further reading

• Plight in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?p?kl?/
• Rhymes: -?k?l

Etymology 1

From Middle English pikel, pykyl, pekille, pigell (“spicy sauce served with meat or fish”), borrowed from Middle Dutch, Middle Low German pekel (“brine”). Cognate with Scots pikkill (“salt liquor, brine”), Saterland Frisian Piekele (“pickle, brine”), Dutch pekel (“pickle, brine”), Low German pekel, peckel, pickel, bickel (“pickle, brine”), German Pökel (“pickle, brine”).

Alternative forms

• pickel (obsolete and rare)

Noun

pickle (countable and uncountable, plural pickles)

1. A cucumber preserved in a solution, usually a brine or a vinegar syrup.

   A pickle goes well with a hamburger.

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

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

5. (informal) A difficult situation; peril.

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

   • 1955, Rex Stout, "Die Like a Dog", in Three Witnesses, October 1994 Bantam edition, ?ISBN, page 194:

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

6. (endearing) A mildly mischievous loved one.
7. (baseball) 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. (slang) A penis.
10. (slang) A pipe for smoking methamphetamine.

    Load some shards in that pickle.

11. (metalworking) 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. In an optical landing system, the hand-held controller connected to the lens, or apparatus on which the lights are mounted.

Synonyms

• (penis): See also Thesaurus:penis

Derived terms

• in a pickle
• pickle switch

Descendants

• ? Dutch: pickles
• ? French: pickles
• ? Irish: picil
• ? Korean: ?? (pikeul)
• ? Spanish: pickles
• ? Welsh: picil

Translations

See also

• piccalilli

Verb

pickle (third-person singular simple present pickles, present participle pickling, simple past and past participle pickled)

1. (transitive, ergative) 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.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:pickle.
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. (programming) (in the Python programming language) To serialize.
   • 2005, Peter Norton et al, Beginning Python:

     You can now restore the pickled data. If you like, close your Python interpreter and open a new instance, to convince yourself […]
4. (historical) To pour brine over a person after flogging them, as a method of punishment.
   • 1756, Thomas Thistlewood, diary, quoted in 2001, Glyne A. Griffith, Caribbean Cultural Identities, Bucknell University Press (?ISBN), page 38:

     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, […]

   • 2016, Christopher P. Magra, Poseidon's Curse: British Naval Impressment and Atlantic Origins of the American Revolution, Cambridge University Press (?ISBN), page 70:

     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.

Derived terms

• pickled
• pickling

Translations

Etymology 2

Perhaps from Scottish pickle, apparently from pick +? -le (diminutive suffix). Compare Scots pickil.

Noun

pickle (plural pickles)

1. (Northern England, Scotland) A kernel; a grain (of salt, sugar, etc.)
2. (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.
   • 1881, Robert Louis Stevenson, "Thrawn Janet"

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

Verb

pickle (third-person singular simple present pickles, present participle pickling, simple past and past participle pickled)

1. (Northern England, Scotland, transitive, intransitive) To eat sparingly.
2. (Northern England, Scotland, transitive, intransitive) To pilfer.

Anagrams

• pelick

French

Etymology

English pickle

Noun

pickle m (plural pickles)

1. pickle (kind of chutney popular in Britain)