# pie

Pronunciation: say "PY" US/UK /paɪ/, AUS /pɑɪ/

## Noun

1. A baked dish of a filling, sweet or savory, enclosed in or topped with pastry or another crust such as mashed potato.
   - Simple: A baked food with fruit, meat, or vegetables inside a pastry case or under a crust.
   - _They ate leftover pumpkin pie for breakfast the morning after Thanksgiving._
   - _The bakery sells meat pies at lunch and fruit pies all afternoon._
2. The whole of a sum of wealth or a resource, seen as something to be divided into shares.
   - Simple: All of the money or other things that a group has to share.
   - _As the city's budget shrinks, every department is fighting over a smaller pie._
   - _Instead of arguing over shares, the partners focused on growing the pie._
3. A pizza, especially a whole one as ordered or served. *(dialectal, Northeastern, US)*
   - Simple: A pizza.
   - _The pizzeria on the corner sells a plain cheese pie for twelve dollars._
   - _Order two pies for the office party, one plain and one with sausage._
4. A circular chart divided into wedges that show how a total is split into parts, also called a pie chart.
   - Simple: A round chart cut into parts like slices, showing how a whole is divided.
   - _The slide showed a pie with one wedge for each department's share of the budget._
   - _Analysts often avoid pies when a dataset has more than a handful of categories._
5. A paper plate covered in whipped cream, shaving cream, or custard that is thrown or rubbed into someone's face for laughs, to raise money for charity, or in protest.
   - Simple: A paper plate of cream pushed or thrown into someone's face for fun, for charity, or in protest.
   - _For every hundred dollars raised, the principal agreed to take a pie in the face._
   - _A protester rushed the stage and pushed a pie into the senator's face._
6. Something that is very easy to do or deal with. *(colloquial)*
   - Simple: Something that is very easy to do.
8. The vulva. *(slang)*
   - Simple: The outer sexual parts of a woman's body.
   - _In the raunchy novel, she warns him that he will have to earn a taste of her pie._
   - _His crude joke about a woman's pie made everyone at the table wince._
10. In cricket, a ball that the bowler delivers especially badly.
   - Simple: In cricket, a very badly bowled ball.
   - _After three tidy overs, the spinner served up a pie that was dispatched for six._
   - _Their part-time bowler sends down so many pies that the captain rarely brings him on._

## Verb

7. To hit someone in the face with a pie, as a joke or as a form of protest.
   - Simple: To push or throw a pie into someone's face, as a joke or a protest.
   - _Activists threatened to pie any executive who showed up at the climate summit._
   - _Fans cheered as the team's mascot pied the coach after the final whistle._
9. To ignore someone. *(slang, UK)*
   - Simple: To pay no attention to someone on purpose.
   - _I messaged him three times and he just pied me off._
   - _If you pie your mates off every time you get a girlfriend, don't be surprised when they stop ringing._

## Noun

11. A magpie. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: A magpie, a kind of bird.

## Other meanings

- (verb) To make one's way around a corner in a guarded manner, staying alert to what lies beyond it.
- (noun) A quantity of drugs weighing one kilogram, usually cocaine.
- (noun) Alternative form of pi: printing type knocked out of order and jumbled together.
- (verb) Another spelling of pi: to jumble printing type into disorder, usually by spilling it.
- (noun) Short for pie-dog: a half-wild stray dog in India, or the Indian pariah dog, a native breed.
- (noun) The smallest coin and money unit of British India, worth one twelfth of an anna or 1/192 of a rupee.
- (noun) The Spanish foot, a traditional unit of length equal to about 27.9 centimeters.

## Origin

**Meanings 1–10** — From Middle English pye, pie, pey, possibly attested earlier in the surname Piehus ("pie-house?") c. 1199; its further origin is uncertain. Some sources derive it from Latin pīca ("magpie, jay"), likening a pie's many ingredients to the variety of objects magpies bring back to their nests, though this is controversial; if so, it is a doublet of pica.
**Meaning 11** — Latin pīcus meant "woodpecker," and its feminine pīca passed through Old French pie into Middle English pye. The root is Proto-Indo-European *(s)peyk- ("woodpecker, magpie"). Speight is a cognate, and pica is a doublet.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/pie (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).