pie
Pluralpies, pie
Pluralpies, pie
- 1A baked food with fruit, meat, or vegetables inside a pastry case or under a crust.
Grandma baked an apple pie for the party.
Can I have another slice of pie?
UsageSay a piece of pie or a slice of pie.
Note
- 2All of the money or other things that a group has to share.
Each team wants a bigger piece of the pie.
When the company makes more money, the pie gets bigger for everyone.
UsageSay a bigger piece of the pie.
Note
- 3A pizza.
Let's order a large pie with mushrooms and onions.
After the game we ate two pies with pepperoni and cheese.
UsageSay a large pie for a large pizza.
Similarpizza
Note
- 4A round chart cut into parts like slices, showing how a whole is divided.
The teacher drew a pie to show how we spend our day.
Her report had two pies and a bar graph.
Note
- 5A paper plate of cream pushed or thrown into someone's face for fun, for charity, or in protest.
The clown got a pie right in the face, and the kids laughed.
Students paid a dollar each to push pies into their teachers' faces for charity.
UsageSay a pie in the face.
- 6Something that is very easy to do.
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.
1989, PC Mag, number 5UsageSay easy as pie.
Similarcinch, breeze, doddle, snap
Note
Less common meanings
- 7To push or throw a pie into someone's face, as a joke or a protest.
The kids voted to pie the principal at the school fair.
Someone pied the mayor in the middle of his speech.
UsageThe past is pied.
Note
- 8The outer sexual parts of a woman's body.
He made a crude joke about her pie, and she told him to leave.
The comedian's dirty jokes about his wife's pie made some people walk out.
Note
- 9
- 10In cricket, a very badly bowled ball.
He hit the pie over the boundary for six runs.
The young bowler kept sending down pies, and the batters scored easily.
Note
- 11A magpie, a kind of bird.
Joe looked as if he thought this talk was like the chattering of a pie.
1849, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], “Which the Genteel Reader is recommended to Skip, Low Persons being here Introduced”Here, pie means a magpie, a noisy bird.Note
- 12To go around a corner carefully, ready for any danger on the other side.
- 13A kilo of an illegal drug, most often cocaine.
- 14Another spelling of pi. Metal printing letters that got spilled and mixed up.
- 15Another spelling of pi. To spill printing letters so they get mixed up.
- 16Short for pie-dog. A native Indian kind of dog, or a stray dog in India.
- 17The smallest coin and money unit of British India, worth one twelfth of an anna.
I gave him all the money in my possession, Rs.9.8.5. – nine rupees, eight annas, and five pie – for I always keep small change as bakshish when I am in camp.
1888, Rudyard Kipling, “The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes”Here, pie means small coins of very low value. - 18An old Spanish measure of length, about 28 centimeters long.
Showing meanings only.
More uses
- cow piea flat lump of cow dung
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of pie apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origins
From Middle English pye, of uncertain origin. Some say it comes from Latin pīca ("magpie"), but this is disputed.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- Pie comes from Middle English pye. en.wiktionary.org
- The word's further origin is uncertain. en.wiktionary.org
- A derivation from Latin pīca, meaning 'magpie', has been proposed. en.wiktionary.org
- The Latin derivation is not established. en.wiktionary.org
It comes from Old French pie. That word came from Latin pīca, which is related to the Latin word for "woodpecker".
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Pie in its bird sense comes from Old French pie. en.wiktionary.org
- Old French pie came from Latin pīca. fr.wiktionary.org
- Latin pīca is related to Latin pīcus, meaning "woodpecker". en.wiktionary.org