Other forms: pierced, piercing, pierces
To pierce is to make a hole right through something with a point. Pierce the lid, a nail pierced the tyre, have your ears pierced.
The last of those is the commonest use in ordinary life, and pierced ears and a piercing are both standard. It also describes sound and light going through something: a scream pierced the silence, sunlight pierced the cloud. The adjective piercing means sharp and penetrating — a piercing whistle, piercing blue eyes, a piercing wind — and is one of the more useful adjectives for describing cold.
1verbpierceTo make a hole through something with a sharp point.
“Pierce the film in two or three places before heating.”
2verbearTo make a hole in the ear or body for jewellery.
“She had her ears pierced at twelve.”
3verbsoundOf sound or light, to cut sharply through.
“A whistle pierced the noise of the crowd.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
pierce is a way of making a hole.
Old French percier came from a Latin word meaning to bore through. It is one of a group of French verbs English borrowed for precise physical actions where the native words were more general: pierce beside stick, and puncture beside prick.
Latin
pertūsus
Vulgar Latin
*pertūsiō
Old French
percier
Middle English
perce
English, today
pierce
Built from
From Middle English perce, from conjugated forms of Old French percier such as pierce (“I pierce”), probably from Vulgar Latin pertūsiō, from Latin pertūsus, past participle of pertundō (“thrust or bore through”), from per- (“through”) + tundō (“beat, pound”). Displaced native þȳrlian.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA