Added 7 October 2026
pie
/paɪ/ noun
In Latin: crustum Wiktionary
noun Definition from WordNet 3.1, Princeton University. Pronunciation from Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org. More about pie at Wordnik → Where our words come from →
- Dish baked in pastry-lined pan often with a pastry top.
- A prehistoric unrecorded language that was the ancestor of all Indo-European languages.
Origin
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.
From Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org (CC BY-SA)