Meaning & use
Pickle
Last updated
A vegetable, especially a cucumber, preserved in vinegar, brine, or a similar solution; also, informally, a difficult or awkward situation.
See it in a sentence
She added a crunchy pickle to the side of her sandwich.
Forgetting his passport at home left him in quite a pickle at the airport.
A note on using this word
The idiom "in a pickle," meaning stuck in a difficult situation, dates back to the 16th century and likely alludes to being as helplessly immersed in trouble as a vegetable in brine.
Words with a similar meaning
Choose a synonym to suit the sentence. Meanings can overlap without being identical.
Another way to use it
2. verb
To preserve food in vinegar, brine, or a similar solution.
They pickled the cucumbers from their garden every summer.
Make it your own
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