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Pickle vs Pencil - What's the difference?

pickle | pencil |

As nouns the difference between pickle and pencil

is that pickle is a cucumber preserved in a solution, usually a brine or a vinegar syrup or pickle can be (scotland) a kernel, grain while pencil is (obsolete) a paintbrush.

As verbs the difference between pickle and pencil

is that pickle is to preserve food in a salt, sugar or vinegar solution while pencil is to write something using a pencil.

pickle

English

Etymology 1

From (etyl) pikel, pykyl, pekille, .

Alternative forms

* pickel (obsolete and rare)

Noun

(en noun)
  • A cucumber preserved in a solution, usually a brine or a vinegar syrup.
    • A pickle goes well with a hamburger.
  • (Often in plural: pickles ), any vegetable preserved in vinegar and consumed as relish.
  • The brine used for preserving food.
    • This tub is filled with the pickle that we will put the small cucumbers into.
  • A difficult situation, peril.
    • The climber found himself in a pickle when one of the rocks broke off.
  • * 1955 , edition, ISBN 0553249592, page 194:
    • I beg you, Miss Jones, to realize the pickle' you're in.
  • A small or indefinite quantity or amount (of something); a little, a bit, a few. Usu . in partitive construction, freq. without /of/; a single grain or kernel of wheat, barley, oats, sand or dust.
  • An affectionate term for a mildly mischievous loved one
  • *
  • *
  • *
  • (baseball) A rundown.
    • Jones was caught in a pickle between second and third.
  • A children’s game with three participants that emulates a baseball rundown
    • The boys played pickle in the front yard for an hour.
  • (slang) A penis.
  • (slang) A pipe for smoking methamphetamine.
    • Load some shards in that ''pickle''.
  • (metalworking) A bath of dilute sulphuric or nitric acid, etc., to remove burnt sand, scale, rust, etc., from the surface of castings, or other articles of metal, or to brighten them or improve their colour.
  • In an optical landing system, the hand-held controller connected to the lens, or apparatus on which the lights are mounted.
    • Synonyms
    * (penis) See also
    Derived terms
    * in a pickle * pickle switch
    See also
    * piccalilli

    Verb

    (pickl)
  • To preserve food in a salt, sugar or vinegar solution.
    • We pickled the remainder of the crop.
  • To remove high-temperature scale and oxidation from metal with heated (often sulphuric) industrial acid.
    • The crew will pickle the fittings in the morning.
  • (programming) (in the Python programming language) To serialize.
  • * 2005 , Peter Norton et al'', ''Beginning Python
    • You can now restore the pickled data. If you like, close your Python interpreter and open a new instance, to convince yourself...
  • * 2008 , Marty Alchin, Pro Django
    • To illustrate how this would work in practice, consider a field designed to store and retrieve a pickled copy of any arbitrary Python object.
    Derived terms
    * pickled * pickling

    Etymology 2

    Perhaps from Scottish 'to trifle, pilfer'

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (Scotland) A kernel, grain
  • (Scotland) A bit, small quantity

    • pencil

    English

    (wikipedia pencil)

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (obsolete) A paintbrush.
  • * 1590 , (Edmund Spenser), The Faerie Queene , III.0:
    • But living art may not least part expresse, / Nor life-resembling pencill it can paynt.
  • *, II.17:
  • *:why is it not lawfull for every man to pourtray himself with his pen, as it was for him to doe it with a pensell ?
  • Writing utensil that uses graphite (commonly referred to as lead). Regular pencils usually have a graphite shaft surrounded by wood. Also available in a mechanical version where the graphite length can be adjusted and sharpening is not needed.
  • (geometry) A family of geometric objects with a common property, such as the set of lines that pass through a given point in a projective plane.
  • (optics) An aggregate or collection of rays of light, especially when diverging from, or converging to, a point.
  • * 1863 , The Civil Engineer and Architect's Journal
    • When, by the pencil becoming oblique to the surface, the vergency produced on the pencil becomes changed, the primary and secondary focal points, V and H, separate
  • (medicine, archaic) A small medicated bougie.

    • Derived terms

    * carpenter's pencil * china pencil * color pencil, colored pencil, coloring pencil * colour pencil, coloured pencil, colouring pencil * golf pencil * grease pencil * lead pencil * mechanical pencil * * pencil crayon * pencil lead * pencil pusher * pencil sharpener * pencil skirt * pencil stub * propelling pencil * wax pencil

    Verb

  • to write something using a pencil
    • I penciled''' (''BrEn:'' '''pencilled ) it in my notebook.

    Derived terms

    * pencil in

    External links

    * (wikipedia "pencil") 1000 English basic words