Other forms: piglets
A piglet is a young pig. A litter of piglets, feed the piglets, nine piglets.
A sow has about ten or twelve in a litter, and the runt often needs hand-rearing. Piglets are weaned at around four weeks in commercial farming and later in extensive systems. The -let ending is a diminutive, the same as in booklet and droplet. Note that piglets are among the more intelligent farm animals and are used in a great deal of research for exactly that reason.
1nounpigletA young pig.
“The piglets squealed and pushed each other to get to their mother's milk.”
piglet is a young animal.
Middle English
pigge
English
pig
English, today
piglet
Built from
From pig + -let. Attested from 1855. Displaced fearh. pig comes from Middle English pigge. From Middle English pigge (“pig, piglet”) (originally a term for a young pig, with adult pigs being swyn (“swine”)), from Old English picga, pycga (attested in picgbrēad (“mast, pig-fodder”)), perhaps a diminutive of Proto-West Germanic puk, pūk (“pig”), which also gave rise to Middle Low German pûke, puyke (“pig, piglet”). Pokorny suggests this root might be somehow related to bū-, bew- (“to blow; swell”), which could account for the alternation between "pig" and "big". Compare Middle Dutch pogge, puggen, pigge, pegsken (> dialectal Dutch pogge (“piglet”)), Middle Low German pugge (> Westphalian German Low German Pogge, Pugge, Püggsken (“pig, piglet”)).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA