pig
n. countablen. a pink or brown farm animal with a flat nose and a short tail. People also use this word to describe someone who eats too much or is very messy.
n. a stout-bodied, short-legged omnivorous mammal of the family Suidae, often domesticated for food. In informal or derogatory contexts, it refers to a person perceived as greedy, gluttonous, or physically untidy.
The farmer feeds the pigs every morning.
The children spent the afternoon watching the pigs roll in the mud at the local farm.
While primarily raised for livestock, pigs are increasingly recognised for their high cognitive abilities and complex social structures within both domestic and wild environments.
From Middle English pigge (“pig, piglet”) (originally a term for a young pig, with adult pigs being swyn (“swine”)), from Old English picga, pycga (attested in picgbrēad (“mast, pig-fodder”)), perhaps a diminutive of Proto-West Germanic puk, pūk (“pig”), which also gave rise to Middle Low German pûke, puyke (“pig, piglet”). Pokorny suggests this root might be somehow related to bū-, bew- (“to blow; swell”), which could account for the alternation between "pig" and "big". Compare Middle Dutch pogge, puggen, pigge, pegsken (> dialectal Dutch pogge (“piglet”)), Middle Low German pugge (> Westphalian German Low German Pogge, Pugge, Püggsken (“pig, piglet”)). A connection to early modern Dutch bigge (modern Dutch big (“piglet”)), West Frisian bigge (“piglet”), German Low German Bigge, Bigg (“piglet”), and Saterland Frisian Bikkie (“piggy”) is sometimes proposed, "but the phonology is difficult". Some sources say the words are "almost certainly not" related, others consider a relation "probable, but not certain". The slang sense of "police officer" is attested since at least 1785.
Possibly a transferred use of pig, because the vessel was thought to resemble the animal.
Commonly used as a derogatory metaphor for a person's behavior; also used as a slang term for a police officer in certain informal registers.