“In a pickle”Alright, so me and my son had a brief conversation about pickles tonight, lol. As he was peeling them off his burger, I asked him why is he still doing that. He doesn't like them. I do. It then led us into another conversation. I asked him, I wonder where the term came from...""In a Pickle" He told me maybe because of how hard it might be to open the jar? Not a bad response, and was better than anything that popped into my mind.
These days, the phrase “in a pickle” has an old-timey ring about it–the last time you heard it, it was probably referring to a baseball player trapped between two bases, and even that’s more commonly called a “rundown” by today’s commentators. But you know what it means: to be stuck in a difficult situation.
English idioms are funny things, pulled out of the wordy hodgepodge of history, and “in a pickle” is one of the more obscure of the bunch.
The ‘in difficulty’ meaning of the expression alludes to the idea of being as mixed up and disoriented as the pickled vegetables in the jar! This was partway to being a literal allusion, as fanciful stories of the day related to
hapless people who found themselves on the menu.
There are a few references to this pickle in print in the late 16th century, and Shakespeare was one of the first to use in a pickle, in The Tempest, 1610:
ALONSO:
And Trinculo is reeling ripe: where should they
Find this grand liquor that hath gilded 'em?
How camest thou in this pickle?
TRINCULO:
I have been in such a pickle since I
saw you last that, I fear me, will never out of
my bones: I shall not fear fly-blowing.
It appears that the meaning for the phrase was different back then. Currently, the saying means 'to be in a rough spot,' but the meaning used in the Shakespearean play is simply 'to be drunk.' Accordingly, certain modern English translations for this play render what Trinculo said as: "I have been so drunk since I last saw you," or something along those lines.
This idiom, with its modern meaning, looks to have been used during the mid 17th century. Samuel Pepys, for example, wrote the term down in 1660 in his diary:
"At home with the workmen all the afternoon, our house being in a most sad pickle."
Pepys describes his house as being in a 'sad pickle.' It is doubtful that he would use that term to mean his house was 'drunk.' Rather, it sounds like he's saying his house is messy looking, or in a rough spot, and needs to be cleaned up.
Okay, so my take on this, is this originally comes from being sloppy drunk and in bad shape, lol. Okay, I like it. That's more interesting to me than the idea of "being as mixed up and disoriented as the pickled vegetables in the jar". Although all three of the reasons listed played a part in the evolution of the phrase, if I'm ever asked, it comes from a Shakespeare poem meaning drunk and in bad shape, lol. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it