Other forms: pimples
A pimple is a small inflamed swelling on the skin. A pimple on his chin, squeeze the pimple, covered in pimples.
Squeezing one pushes the contents deeper as often as it clears them, which is why the advice is to leave it alone. It is not caused by dirt or by chocolate, whatever the folklore says. The origin of the word is uncertain.
1nounpimpleA small inflamed swelling on the skin.
“He woke up on the morning of his first date with a big pimple on his nose.”
pimple is a skin swelling.
Middle English pympyl, of uncertain origin, probably related to an Old English word for a small swelling.
Old English
*pipel
Middle English
pymple
English, today
pimple
Built from
Early Modern English pimple, pumple, from Middle English pymple, pympyl, of unknown origin but probably a nasalized variant of Old English pipel, pypel, from Old English piplian, pyplian (“to break out in pimples, show eruptions”), probably related to Latin papula (“pimple, pustule”) (from Proto-Indo-European pap- (“pock mark, nipple”)). Akin to Old English pipliġende (“having shingles”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA