a. A baked dish of fruit, meat, fish, or vegetables, covered with pastry (or a similar substance) and frequently also having a base and sides of pastry. Also (chiefly North American): a baked open pastry case filled with fruit; a tart or flan. Also as a mass noun.The pie appears to have been at first of meat or fish. Doubtful or undefined uses appear in 16th cent. Fruit pies (also called tarts, esp. in the north of England, Ireland, Scotland, and frequently in the U.S.) appear before 1600, e.g. apple pie n., plum pie n.Frequently with distinguishing word denoting the main ingredient, as apple, eel, pork pie, etc.: see the first element.A pie may be of any shape, but the round shape is the basis of several figurative and similative uses; cf. also pie-shaped adj. at Compounds 2.Recorded earliest in pieman n.

b. colloquial (originally British). Usually depreciative or (occasionally) humorous. Who ate all the pies? and variants: a taunt implying that a person is fat.Originally chanted at football matches.

a. Something considered to resemble a baked pie in shape or constituency; a mass of some substance shaped into the form of a pie. Cf. cake n. 6a.Frequently as the final element in compounds: see clay-pie n. at clay n. Compounds 3; mud-pie n.; dirt-pie n., etc.

b. Electrical Engineering. Each of a number of individually wound flat coils placed side by side on a form or core and connected in series, with adjacent coils separated so as to reduce the distributed capacitance.

a. An affair, business, enterprise, etc. Esp. in to have a finger (also hand) in the pie: to be involved in a matter, esp. in an interfering way; to have a piece of the pie and variants: to be involved in a matter; to have a finger in every pie: to be involved in a large and varied number of activities or enterprises; to put a finger into (a person's) pie and variants: to interfere in (someone else's) business; †to cut a pie (U.S.): to become involved in a matter (obsolete).

b. Originally U.S. With the: assets, proceeds, wealth, etc., considered collectively as something to be apportioned or shared out. Frequently with qualifying adjective. Cf. cake n. 9.

a. As the type of something pleasurable, in (as) nice (also good, sweet, etc.) as pie.

†b. Something very pleasant or pleasurable to deal with; something to be eagerly appropriated; a prize, a treat. Obsolete.

a. Something easily accomplished or dealt with; a cinch. Cf. pie in the sky n.In some cases not clearly distinguishable from sense 5b.

b. easy (also simple, etc.) as pie.