Etymology

This v. is evidently related to the n. OE pīc ‘point, pointed tool, pick, pickaxe’ and its cognates, cp. Go peika-bagms ‘palm tree’, LG peik ‘pointed implement’, OIcel pík ‘staff with a point or spike’, which suppose a PGmc *pīkaz (but whose ulterior etymology is unclear). There are comparable verbs in WGmc and ON, viz. WFris pikke ‘to pick, peck’, MDu picken, pīken ‘to pierce or strike with a pick (etc.)’, LG picken ‘to pick, peck, tap’, Ger picken ‘to pick, peck’ and OIcel pikka ‘to pick, prick’. An (early) OE verbal n. <picung> (glossing stigmata) also occurs, on the basis of which an unrecorded OE v. *pīcian or *pician (or both) can be plausibly reconstructed; the majority of ME spellings of the v. are ambiguous, but there are some clear instances with both short and long vowels (OED3’s ‘α’ and ‘β’ forms respectively). Input from such an ON v. is potentially helpful in accounting for ME variants in short /i/ (which we need not assume for Gaw <piked>); and the Scandinavian v. represented by OIcel pikka in any case appears relatively late and is usually explained as a loan from LG (so de Vries, Mag., OED3).

PGmc Ancestor

*pīk- or *pik-

Proposed ON Etymon (OIcel representative)

pikka 'to pick, prick'
(ONP pikka (vb.))

Other Scandinavian Reflexes

Far pikka, Icel pikka, Norw pikka, Dan pikke, Sw picka

OE Cognate

cp. pīc (n.) ‘point, pointed tool, pick, pickaxe’; picung (n.) 'stigmata, pricking'

Phonological and morphological markers

Summary category

CCC1a

Attestation

Common and widespread in ME from the mid-13c. (AW MS T), and from c. 1200 in personal names (MED’s sense 10).  The pp. (meaning ‘having a point or pike, pointed’) is also found in place-names (Wil., Lan., Cum.) and field-names (Mid., Not., Wil.).

Occurrences in the Gersum Corpus

Gaw 2017; Pe 573, 1036; Cl 1466; Pat 393

Bibliography

MED pīken (v.1) , OED3 pick (v.1) , HTOED , Dance piked, de Vries pikka (2), Mag. pikka (2), AEW pīc, EPNE *pīced, piked