Thursday, October 5, 2017

Pie

Pie

This week we investigate whether a pie by any other name taste as sweet.

Sometime around 1300 the word pie appeared in English. It was used to refer to meat or fish encased in pastry. Some etymologists argue that it came from an Old English word for bakery, piehus, while others argue pie must have pre-dated piehus because the Old English word for house was — you guessed it — hus, thus the word for bakery might have simply meant pie house. Sadly, at the moment we don’t have enough linguistic forensic information to answer this pressing question.  

Pie seems to have a relationship with a Medieval Latin word meaning the same thing. It also seems to be connected with the word magpie. The connection may be that a medieval pie included various foodstuffs, while a pastry included only one, and a magpie has a fascination for collecting miscellaneous objects. Just think, if it tables were turned on those two words, we’d all be calling a black and white bird a magpastry

In the 1500s, a cunning person could be referred to as a wily pie.

By the 1600s, the word pie could be used to label a fruit-filled pastry.

In the 1830s, folks forced to face humiliation could be said to be eating humble pie. This idiom is based on umble pie, a pie made of inglorious animal parts — a dish eaten by folks who couldn’t afford anything else — thus the confusion with the word humble.

The inaccurate, yet ubiquitous idiom easy as pie showed up in 1889. 

As of 1904 we could label an inebriated individual as pie-eyed

By 1911, unrealistic hopes could be referred to as pie in the sky.

And in 1922 the term pie chart was born.

The word pi has no relationship to pie pi came through Greek from a Phoenician word meaning little mouth & appeared in English in 1748 to refer to the mathematical constant 3.14…

If you’re inspired to comment non-etymologically, consider sharing your favorite sort of pie




Big thanks to this week’s sources: the OED, Etymonline, Collins Dictionary, Merriam Webster, & Wordnik.

6 comments:

  1. Well, shut my pie hole; umble pie, not humble pie. That makes sense, now that I know what umble means. And no thank you on the umble pie. I'll have a piece of Ellen apple pie any day though. Even three times a day!

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  2. Hey Christine -- it was Ellen's apple pie that led me to this post. Thanks - once more - for dropping by.

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  3. In rural England ten years ago, I discovered that a "bakery" had no doughnuts, crullers or danish pastries. It mostly sold bread and pies. Meat (and veg) pies. (Amazingly delish.) Another pie expression: pie-faced, meaning drunk. I'm not sure where that comes from. Maybe because a person was likely fall face-first in his pie?

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    1. Hi Anne -- Yikes! What did the Brits calla place that makes donuts, pastries & crullers?

      I'm sorry I missed "pie-faced". I also wasn't smart enough to point out the beautiful irony in the fact that pi means little mouth & pies are things we put in our mouths. Also, another idiom that's appeared recently is "shut your pie-hole" (something I would never say to you).

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    2. ...and then there is "The Pie"...the piebald equine hero of the wonderful novel 'National Velvet'...who was not piebald at all in the equally-wonderful movie with young Elizabeth Taylor and only-slightly-older Mickey Rooney. Piebald refers to an animal (like a horse) with a white coat which is 'patched' with black (or maybe brown or, in the case of the bald python, yellow). Amazingly, as I googled to corroborate this reply, there is a new report out of Connecticut (only yesterday!) about a woman who was most distressed to find a piebald deer (which had been frequenting her yard) dead. Turns out she (the doe deer) was killed by a compound bow---legally because it is hunting season there now, and there are woods all the way around the area in which this occurred. Small-but-amazingly-interconnected world we live in!

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    3. Small & interconnected, indeed. And "piebald" is an intriguing word. I looked into it a bit in this post: http://csperryess.blogspot.com/search?q=piebald

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