pie
/paɪ/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.19 in modern English
5
Scrabble Score
3
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A type of pastry that consists of an outer crust and a filling. (Savory pies are more popular in the UK and sweet pies are more popular in the US, so "pie" without qualification has different connotations in these dialects.)
Countable; Uncountable
noun
Any of various other, non-pastry dishes that maintain the general concept of a shell with a filling.
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "The family had steak and kidney pie for dinner and cherry pie for dessert."
- "SATURNINUS: Go fetch them hither to us presently. TITUS: Why, there they are, both baked in that pie, Whereof their mother daintily hath fed, Eating the flesh that she herself hath bred."
- "Shepherd's pie is made of mince covered with mashed potato."
- "It is easier to get along when everyone, more or less, is getting ahead. But when the pie is shrinking, social groups are more likely to turn on each other."
- "Pies are best for comparing the components of only one or two totals."
- "Programmers haven't exactly been wild about certain Microsoft policies — such as the price of the OS/2 developer's kit or the fib about how Microsoft Windows code would be pie to translate to the Presentation Manager."
Etymology
From Middle English pye, pie, pey (“baked dish, filled pastry”), possibly attested earlier (c. 1199) in the surname Piehus (“pie-house?”). Further origin uncertain. Relation to Middle English 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 doublet of speight.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /paɪ/
- British English: /paɪ/
Usage
- Countable
- Uncountable
- American usage
- Informal
- Slang
- Transitive verb
- British usage
- Obsolete
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Food.