pig, sixpence (Cant); ‘Fill till’t be sixpence, And there’s my pig’, Fletcher, Beggar’s Bush, iii. 1 (1 Boor).
pigeaneau, a dupe, a gull. Farquhar, Sir Harry Wildair, iv. 1 (Marquis). F. pigeonneau, a young pigeon, a dupe; dimin. of pigeon.
pigeon-holes, the name of a game; the same as [troll-my-dames], q. v.; ‘Dice, cards, pigeon-holes’, Rowley, A Woman never vext, i. 1 (Old Foster); in Hazlitt’s Dodsley, xii. 101; ii. 1. 3; in Hazlitt, xii. 120.
pigeon-livered, applied to one incapable of anger; ‘I am pigeon-livered and lack gall’, Hamlet, ii. 2. 605. A pigeon was supposed to have no gall, and so to lack capacity for anger or resentment. ‘Sure he’s a pigeon, for he has no gall’, Dekker, Honest Wh., Pt. I, i. 5 (Castruchio).
pight, pt. t. pitched; ‘Under Pomfret his proud Tents he pight’, Drayton, Agincourt, 97; ypight, pp., ‘Underneath a craggy cliff ypight’, Spenser, F. Q. i. 9. 33; pight, Tr. and Cr. v. 10. 24. ME. pighte, pt. t. of picchen; y)pight, pp., see Dict. M. and S. (s.v. Picchen).
pigsnye, a darling, a pet, commonly used as an endearing form of address to a girl. Dryden, Tempest, iv. 3; Farquhar, Love and Bottle, i. 1. Spelt pigges-nye, Lyly, Euphues, 114. In Butler, Hud. (ii. 1. 560), Pigsneye occurs in the sense of a ‘dear little eye’.
pike: in phr. sold at a pike, Kyd, Cornelia, v. 444 (not far from end). Here Kyd translates from F. vendre sous une pique, which refers to the L. phrase venalis sub hasta, ‘that can be sold by auction’. It looks as if Kyd did not understand the allusion.
pike: in phr. on the pike, ‘a-peak’; used of an anchor, when the cable has been hove in so as to bring the ship just over it. Greene, Looking Glasse, iii. 1. F. à pic, ‘perpendiculairement’ (Dict. de l’Acad., 1762).
pilch, to pilfer, to filch. Tusser, Husbandry, § 15. 39; ‘Pilche, miche, suffurari’, Levins, Manip. In prov. use in Worc. and Glouc. (EDD.).
pilcher, a term of abuse, prob. meaning one who ‘pilches’; it is sometimes punningly connected with the word pilchard (see below). B. Jonson, Poetaster, iii. 4; Fletcher, Wit without Money, iii. 4.