(in) a pretty pickle
idiom

- to be in a difficult situation

- a particularly troublesome or difficult predicament

- in a difficult situation or a troubling quandary

Cambridge Dictionary, The Free Dictionary, McGraw-Hill Dictionary

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WORD ORIGIN

The story behind "pickle" is more tangled than you might expect. The word itself probably comes from the Dutch pekel, meaning brine rather than the cucumber sitting in it. The figurative sense — being metaphorically immersed in something unpleasant — goes back to the mid-16th century.

The expression “in a pickle” is recorded from the late 16th century, and William Shakespeare famously used it in The Tempest (1610), though there it appears to mean something closer to being drunk or in a muddled state. Over time the sense settled into the modern meaning of “in trouble".

BTW, speaking of words that have completely transformed their identities over the centuries, the entry following has a story that is, well,... pretty interesting!

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PRETTY INTERESTING!

The adjective pretty has expanded far beyond its traditional meaning of "attractive" or "beautiful". In modern English, it is often used as an intensifier meaning fairly, quite, or rather.

Traditional Meaning (beautiful):
- She's a pretty girl.
- That's a pretty village.
- What a pretty painting.

Modern Intensifier Meaning (fairly, quite, rather):
- That's pretty interesting.
- I'm pretty sure you're right.
- It was pretty expensive.
- The movie was pretty good.
- He's pretty upset about it.
- We're pretty close to finishing.
- The weather is pretty awful today.
- She's pretty amazing at languages.
- That was pretty embarrassing.
- The results are pretty impressive.

Spoken Examples:
- "I've pretty much given up alcohol."
- "It's pretty well impossible to park here."
- "Things got pretty weird after midnight."
- "That was pretty cool, actually."
- "I'm pretty confident it'll work."

BUT TAKE CARE, sometimes pretty is used ironically or as an understatement:
- "That's a pretty big mistake." (= a huge mistake)
- "We're in a pretty serious situation." (= a very serious situation)
- "He was pretty furious." (= extremely furious)

The journey of pretty from "beautiful" to "quite" to "extremely" is a good example of how words gradually shift from describing things to expressing the speaker's attitude toward them.

Dare we say that "OWAD is a pretty good way to develop English eloquence." ?  :-)

Helga & Paul Smith

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SYNONYMS

a bind, a fix, a hole, a jam, a predicament, A PRETTY PICKLE, a quandary, a scrape, a spot of bother, a sticky situation, a tight corner (spot), having problems, heading for disaster (for the rocks), in a bad way, in a difficult situation, in a mess, in an awkward situation, in a predicament, in deep/hot water, in desperate/dire straits, in shtook (shtuck), in the soup, screwed, up a gum tree, up the creek (without a paddle), with one's back against the wall



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SMUGGLE today's word into a conversation today, start with something like:



“I guess everyone gets into a PRETTY PICKLE from time to time… “

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