Other forms: pickles
A pickle is a vegetable preserved in vinegar or brine. Pickled onions, a jar of pickles, cheese and pickle.
In American English a pickle is specifically a pickled cucumber; in British English pickle usually means a chunky vinegar preserve eaten with cheese, and the cucumber is a gherkin. Pickling works by making the food too acid for bacteria. The informal sense is a difficult situation — in a bit of a pickle — which is cheerful and mild. Note pickled, which is also old slang for drunk.
1nounpickleA vegetable preserved in vinegar or brine.
“There is a jar of pickles at the back of every fridge in Britain.”
2noundifficultA difficult situation.
“They were in a bit of a pickle by about the third day.”
pickle is a preserved food, or a difficulty.
Middle Low German pekel meant brine. The word arrived through the Dutch and North German trade in preserved fish and vegetables, along with much of the English vocabulary of barrels and salting.
Middle Low German
pekel — brine
Middle English
pikel — spicy sauce served with meat or fish
English, today
pickle
From Middle English pikel (“spicy sauce served with meat or fish”), borrowed from Middle Dutch -, Middle Low German pekel (“brine”). Cognate with Scots pikkill (“salt liquor, brine”), stq Piekele (“pickle, brine”), Dutch pekel (“pickle, brine”), Low German pekel, peckel, pickel, bickel (“pickle, brine”), German Pökel (“pickle, brine”), Icelandic pækill (“brine”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA