Learn English – Where did the phrase “in a pickle” come from

phrases

To be 'in a pickle' means to be in trouble or a difficult situation. What I'm wondering is, where did the root of this phrase come from and what's its history? Is there a special story that caused this phrase to catch on? Was it someone almost being pickled?

Funny thing is, that I was actually eating a pickle when I thought of this.

Best Answer

Etymonline offers this:

pickle mid-15c., probably from Middle Dutch pekel "pickle, brine," from a Low German root of uncertain origin or meaning (cf. [...] German pökel). [...] Figurative sense of "sorry plight" first recorded 1560s.

The Phrase Finder supplies some background:

The figurative version of the phrase, meaning simply 'in a fix' [...] arrives during the [16th] century. Thomas Tusser's Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie, 1573, contains this useful advice:

Reape barlie with sickle, that lies in ill pickle.

[...]

There are a few references to ill pickles and this pickle etc. in print in the late 16th century, and Shakespeare was one of the first to use in a pickle, in The Tempest, 1610 [Act V, Scene 1, Line 2354]:

ALONSO:
And Trinculo is reeling ripe: where should they
Find this grand liquor that hath gilded 'em?
How camest thou in this pickle?

TRINCULO:
I have been in such a pickle since I
saw you last that, I fear me, will never out of
my bones: I shall not fear fly-blowing.

Follow the links for additional insight.

Related Topic