pike 
That Penltenoia his puke he schiildc polsche newe. 
I'ii'i-x Hou-man (B), v. 482. 
(6) (1) A sharp-pointed weapon consisting of a long shaft 
or handle with an iron head. It has 
heen in use from ancient times, but 
the word dates apparently from the 
fifteenth century. About that pe- 
riod, and for some time later, it was 
the arm of a large part of the infan- 
try, and was from 15 to 20 feet long. 
It continued in use, although re- 
duced in length, throughout the 
seventeenth century, and was re- 
placed by the bayonet as the latter 
as improved. It was retained in 
the British army until a very late 
date as a mere ensign of rank. (See 
half-pike and spontoon.) The pike 
has always been the arm of hastily 
levied and unequipped soldiers ; 
4484 
pilar 
a misnomer in the San Francisco market. Also absurdly pikelin (pik'lin), it. IX pike 1 (?) + -/( for -Una 1 .! 
called salmon-trout, (c) In Australia, the Sphyriena no- *a a , Ytil-rlrt 
nr-l,Ma,vKie.saH\S.obhisata. (d) The sea-pike (a belonid). 2J as /,' 'V' ... ry 
See also phrases below. Bald pike, ganoid flsh, Amia pikeman 1 (pik man), n. ; pl.pikemen (-men). [< 
mini. |i .s.| Bonypike. Same as /;>, 2. Brazil- p*el + man.] 1. A soldier armed with a 
ian pike, a seomberesocid flsh, of the genus Hemirham pike ; especially about 
phus. Pennant.- Federation pike, a, pickerel, Esox the 8ixt ^ enth j d sev . 
enteenth centuries, a 
member of a regularly 
organized body of such 
soldiers. 
anifricanm: so called in allusion to the bands with 
which its body is crossed and rays being often thirteen 
in number. Glass-eyed pike, the pike-perch, Stizoste- 
dion americanum, or & vitreum. Also called goggle-eyed 
and wall-eyed pike. Gray pike. Same as blue-pike. 
Great pike, the maskalonge, A'sor nobilior. Green pike. 
(a) The pike-perch. Stizostedion vitreum. (b) The common 
pickerel, Emx reticulatus. Ground-pike, the sauger, 
Stizostedion canadenxe. Humpbacked pike, Esox cypho. 
E. D. Cow. Mud-pike, the sauger. [Lake Ontario.] 
Sand-pike, (a) The sauger. (b) The lizard-fish, Synodus 
fastens. Wall-eyed pike. Same as glass-eyed pike. 
Pikes. 
o, pike, 2 ()(a); , 
ordinary infantry pike, 
17th century. 
. . 
. muu.vi. Yellow pike, the pike-perch, Stizostedion vitreum. 
thousands were useil'in the French pike 3 (pik), n. [Abbr. of turnpike, turnpike 
revolution. Such pikes have usu- road.] A turnpike; a turnpike road. 
The Swiss battalion con- 
sisted of pikemen, and bore 
a close resemblance to the 
Greek phalanx. 
Macaulay, Machiavelli. 
2. A miner who works 
with a pike or crowbar. 
Disraeli, Sybil, ii. 6. 
. < piket, .'] To go Pikeman 2 (pik'man), 
[< pike* + man.] A 
ally a round conical head, a mere 
ferrule of thin iron bent into that * ~ Vcn -i 
form, but long, sharp-pointed, and rapidly, [blang.] - - 
formidable. The pike of regular plke 4 t, . t. An obsolete form of mcK*, pitch 1 . '" 
warfare had sometimes a round, sometimes a flat or pike B t, v. i. [ME. mkcn: see peek*.! To peep; 
spear-like head. peek 
Fandarns, that ledde hire by the lappe, 
Com ner, and gan in at the curtyn pike. 
Chaucer, Troilus, iii. 60. 
In the Court there was a Soldier pourtrayed at length 
with a blacke pike in his hand. Coryat, Crudities, I. 223. 
(2) A weapon which replaced for a short time the sim- 
ple pointed pike; it had an ax-blade on one side and a 
pointed beak or hook on the other. In this form it was - ., .- . -,, -, , , 
retained In the French army as a badge of rank as late as PlKettMpl ked or lkt), a. 
(ct) A pitchfork used by fanners. 
., 
" 
the first empire. 
A rake for to hale up the fltches that lie, 
A pike for to pike them up, handsome to dry. 
Tusser, September's Husbandry. 
3. A sharp-pointed hill or mountain summit; 
a peak. [North. Eug.] 
A gathering weight of shadows brown 
Falls on the valleys as the sun goes down ; 
And POces, of darkness named and fear and storms, 
Uplift in quiet their illumined forms. 
Wordsworth, Descriptive Sketches. 
Masses of broken crag rising at the very head of the 
valley into a fine pike, along whose jagged edges the rain- 
clouds were trailing. 
Mrs. Humphry Ward, Robert Elsmere, I. vii. 
4. A point of land; a gore. See gwe 2 , ., 2. 
[Prov. Eng.] 5. A large cock of hay. [Prov. 
Eng.] 6f. Same as pikeman 1 , 1. 
Your halbardier should be armed in all points like your 
pike. Markham, Soldiers Accidence, p. 4. 
7f. A measure of length, originally based on the 
length of the weapon so called. 
He had nineteene and a halfe pikes of cloth, which cost 
in London twenty shillings the pike. 
Uakluyt's Voyages, II. 249. 
pike j t (pik), v. ; pret. and pp. piked, ppr. piking. 
[< ME. piken, pyken, prob. only or chiefly with 
a short vowel, piken, a var. of picken, pikken, 
mod. pick 1 : the ref . to pike 1 , n,, being only sec- 
ondary: see pike 1 , pick 1 , pitch 1 .'] I. trans. 1. 
To pick or pluck. 2. To pick or choose; se- 
lect; cull. 
Diligently clodde it, pyke oute stones. 
Pattadius, Husbondrie (E. E. T. S.), p. 62. 
Were it soe that the juryes could be piked out of such 
choyse men as you desire, there would nevertheless be as 
badd corruption in the tryall. Spenser, State of Ireland. 
3. To bring to a point; taper. 
And for this purpose must your bow be well trimmed 
and piked of a cunning man, that it 
An obsolete 
[< ME. piked, pyked; 
(pike 1 + -|2.] "Same as picked 1 . 
With scrip and pyked staf, y-touked hye. 
In every nous he gan to pore and prye 
And begged mele or chesse or ellis corn. 
Chaucer, Summoner's Tale, 1. 29. 
His teeth white and even ; his hair yellow and not too 
piked. Sir T. More, Life of Picus, Int. to Utopia, p. Ixxviii. 
Their shoes and pattens are snouted and ////,"/ more 
than a finger long. Camden, Remains. 
Fangeas rich in silver, and Massapus for his high steep 
piked rocks to be wondred at, Sandys, Travailes, p. 33. 
Anne of Bohemia, to whom she had been Maid of Hon- 
our, introduced the fashion of piked horns, or high heads. 
Walpole, Letters, II. 121. 
Piked shoon. See pikel, n., 1 (e). - Piked staff. Same 
as pikestaff. 
pike-deyantt, . [Also pickedevant, pickade- 
vant, pickadevaunt, peake-devant, pickatevant, 
pickitivant; < OF. *pique devant (?), < pique, a 
sharp point, a pike (seepike 1 ), + devant, before 
(< de, from, + avant, before: see avant-).'] A 
beard cut to a sharp point in the middle, so as 
The turnpike has gone, and 
the pikeman with his apron 
has gone nearly every- 
body's apron has gone too 
and the gates have been 
removed. 
W. Besant, Fifty Years Ago, 
lp. 42. 
pike-perch (pik'perch), n. 
the genus Stizostedion (or Lucioperca), of elon- 
gate form, with a subconical head, and sharp 
canines mixed with the villiform teeth of the 
jaws and palate. The most common pike-perch in 
Europe is S. lucioperca. In the United States two species 
are common, in the upper Mississippi and Great Lake 
Pikeinan of early i?th century, 
from print of the time. 
A pereoid fish of 
to form a peak or pike below the chin, 
fashion is illustrated in 
of the time of Charles I. 
. -. .-, . -p 
fashion is illustrated m most of the portraits and Look at one end, used by lumbermen in 
Pike-perch (Stizostedion vitreum). 
regions : S. vitreum, attaining a length of 3 feet, and a 
weight of from 10 to 20 pounds, and S. canadense, which 
is rarely over 15 inches long. (See Lucioperca.) The former 
is known as walleye, glasseye, wall-eyed or glass-eyed pike, 
gray pike, and jack-salmon. The other is called hornfsh, 
sauger, and sand-pike. 
A pole with a prong 
This pike-pole (pik~'p61), n. 
and nook at one end, 
driving logs on rivers. 
f), [< 
[Slang.] 
And here I vow by my concealed beard, if ever itchance nitpr ("ni'k^rl n K nil-e3 4- -/*>! 1 A tmn 
o be discovered to the world, that it may make a pike- P r?, ,* = L . P ' K * ' J A tramp ' 
burnt, I will have it so sharp pointed that it shall stab vagrant. 
to be dis 
devi 
Motto like a poynado. ' Lyly, Midas, v. 2. (Nares.) The people called in Acts of Parliament sturdy beggars 
He must . . . mark . . . how to cut his beard and wear ? nd vagrants, in the old cant language Abraham men, and 
his lock, to turn up his mushatos, and curl his head, prune ln tne modern Pikers. 
his pickitivant, or if he wear it abroad, that the east side Borrow, Wordbook of the English Gypsy Language, 
be correspondent to the west. Burton, Anat. of Mel. , iii. 2. pikerelt, >< A Middle English f orm of pickerel. 
pikedevantedt, a. [Found as pittivanted; < pikestaff (pik'staf), n.; pi. pikestaves (-stavz). 
pike-devant + -e<7 2 .] Having a pike-devant. [< ME. pykstaf (usually piked staff); <pike 1 + 
[Bare.] staff."} A staff with an iron head more or less 
A young, pMimnted, trim-bearded fellow. pointed and capable of serving as a weapon, 
Burton, Anat. of Mel., p. 480. formerly used by travelers, pilgrims, and wau- 
pike-fork (pik'fdrk), . Same as/orit, 2 (c) (1). dering beggars. Also piked staff. 
Some made long pikes and lances light, He had a pike-sta/ in his hand 
Some pike-forks for to join and thrust. That was baith stark and strang. 
Old poem on Battle of Floddeu. RoUn Hood and the Beygar (Child's Ballads, V. 188). 
1. A form of ?i aln as , a P^estaff. 
Any fish of the 
it may come round in 
true compass every where. 
Ascham, Toxophilus (ed. 1864), p. 114. .. , 
.ifissis" or """ " *" k B -!="!ur;:3 
^^JSSs^^^^^SSiS&SjK^a^S 1 ^^^!!^ 1 ^^^ 
<pike, a 'Sharp point: tee pike 1 . Cf. theequiv. over 3 feet in length, with a shaft about 6 feet long. pikeyst, >i. A Middle English form of pickax. 
names, V.hake2,haked, etc.; F. brocket, a pike, 2. The head of the staff of certain military piki, n. Seepeekee. 
Ibroche, a spit; Bret, beked, a pike, < bek, beak ; flags, specifically of those carried by the regi- pikket. A Middle English form of pick 1 pitch* 
D. snock, a pike, < snoeijen, cut.] 1. A fish of ments of the first French empire. pilal (pi'la), n. [< L. piU, a mortar: see vile 1 
SMrsftr^teS'ftss-as ad(pDt ' hed) ' w< * Thehead fa P ike r g^^^ 1 ^ art ' a mortar - fspel 
Its cheeks are scaly, the opercles , BnearB cCologicaUy on ac- 
count of its 
s P e a r - 
Had nven many a brest 
2. In ichth., a fish of the family Luciocephalidx 
pike-headed (pik'hed"ed), n. 1. Having a 
sharp-pointed head. 2. Having a head like a 
pike's, with long snout and jaws.-pike-headed 
alligator, the common Mississippi 
Pike (Esax lttcitis\. 
are naked below, the color is grayish with many round 
tisn spots or pale bars, and the dorsal, anal and cau- 
dal flns are spotted with black. The other pikes of the 
Dotted States, except the maskalonge, are commonly 
called pukerel. See also cuts under parasphenoid, valuta- 
tmadrate, Esox, optic, and teleost. 
2. Some other slender fish with a long snout, 
or otherwise resembling the pike proper (def. 
'' s P<ficlly--- () A cyprinoid flsh, PtychoehUus In- 
ms, of slender form with a long snout, inhabiting the 
Sacramento river and other streams of the Pacific coast, 
iforma.] (b) Another cyprinoid flsh, Gila gr,i,i;- 
pike-keeper (pik'ke"perj, . The keeper of a 
turnpike ; a tollman. 
"What do you mean by a pike-keeper f" inquired Mr 
Peter Magnus. "The old 'un means a turnpike-keeper 
gen'l'm'n.' observed Mr. Weller, in explanation. 
Dickens, Pickwick, xxii. 
pikelet (pik'let), . [< pike 1 (?) + -let.] A 
light cake or muffin ; a thin circular tea-cake. 
Halliwetl. [Prov. Eng.] 
He crumpled up his broad face like a half-toasted pike- 
* Anna Seward, Letters. (Latham.) 
found in Switzerland, hol- 
lowed out of the trunks of 
large trees and having pes- 
tles arranged to be wielded 
see pile 2 .}" The holy- 
water font in an Ital- 
ian church, usually a 
stone vase of consider- 
able richness. 
pila 3 , . Plural of pi- 
lum. 
pilaget, n. An obso- 
lete form of pelage. 
pilar (pi'lar), a. Per- 
taining to or covered 
. Italy. 
