pickle

name

1. A surname.

noun

Etymology: Perhaps from Scottish pickle, apparently from pick + -le (diminutive suffix). Compare Scots pickil.

1. A kernel; a grain (of salt, sugar, etc.)
2. A small or indefinite quantity or amount (of something); a little, a bit, a few. Usually in partitive construction, frequently without "of"; a single grain or kernel of wheat, barley, oats, sand or dust.

   “[…] ill things are like guid—they baith come bit by bit, a pickle at a time […]”

   “I mind him well, and the burn we fished and the pickle things we took out, and your mother that played with us in her cutty sark, and not a shoe between us nor a bodle of money; but the green hills round us, and all we knew of the world that it lay beyond them.”

verb

Etymology: Perhaps from Scottish pickle, apparently from pick + -le (diminutive suffix). Compare Scots pickil.

1. To eat sparingly.
2. To pilfer.