- (plural pike)a large freshwater fish with very sharp teethTopics Fish and shellfishc2
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- a weapon with a sharp blade (= metal cutting edge) on a long wooden handle, used in the past by soldiers on foot
- (also turnpike)(North American English) a wide road, where traffic can travel fast for long distances and that drivers must pay a toll to use
- (dialect) a pointed top of a hill in the north of England
- the Langdale Pikes
Word Originsense 1 Middle English: from pike ‘weapon’ (because of the fish's pointed jaw).sense 2 and sense 4 early 16th cent.: from French pique, back-formation from piquer ‘pierce’, from pic ‘pick, pike’; compare with Old English pīc ‘point, prick’ (of unknown origin). Sense (4) is apparently of Scandinavian origin; compare with West Norwegian dialect pīk ‘pointed mountain’.
Idioms
See pike in the Oxford Advanced American Dictionarycome down the pike
- (North American English, informal) to happen; to become easy to notice
- We're hearing a lot about new inventions coming down the pike.
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