Other forms: pies
A pie is a baked dish with pastry and a filling. An apple pie, a meat pie, a slice of pie.
In Britain a pie should properly have a pastry lid, which is why the pie-and-mash argument about whether a top-only dish counts runs on. Fillings divide the world: sweet in America, savoury more often in Britain and Australia. Note easy as pie; pie in the sky; a finger in every pie; and pie chart, named simply for the shape.
1nounpieA baked dish with pastry and a filling.
“She baked an apple pie and served it warm with cream.”
pie is a baked dish.
Middle English pye is of unknown origin. One suggestion connects it to the magpie, on the idea of a collection of odd things gathered together, which is unproven but appealing.
Latin
pīca — magpie
Old French
pie
Middle English
pye
English, today
pie
Built from
From Middle English pye, pie, pey (“baked dish, filled pastry”), possibly attested earlier (1199) in the surname Piehus (“pie-house?”). Further origin unknown. Relation to pie, pye (“magpie”) has been suggested due to correspondences between other similar foods and the names of birds (compare haggis (“Scottish dish”) and haggess (“magpie”); and chewet (“meat pie”) and chewet (“chough, jackdaw”); however, the baked dish may instead be named after a creator with the surname Pie, a common name at the time. The surname is ultimately derived from the bird above, and thus from Old French pie, from Latin pīca (“magpie”). If true, then a doublet of speight.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA