Pie-Eyed

March 24th, 2008 by admin

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Posted in columns, March 2008 | 10 comments

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10 comments on this post.

  1. Topi Linkala:

    May 2nd, 2009 at 5:00 am

    In UK pie, as a food, doesn’t necessary have pastry crust, but can be a owen baked dish with mashed potatoe on top. Shepeard’s pie has minced meat a gravy under the potatoe and fishpie has various fishes, veggies and sauce under the potatoe.

    NES

  2. Jules:

    November 7th, 2009 at 11:15 pm

    I’ll drink to that description!

  3. Tim A:

    December 30th, 2009 at 11:45 am

    But how much credence we should give to someone who cannot even spell a simple word such as POTATO ?

    [Ed. — I’ll bet he can. He just didn’t this time.]

  4. patti:

    December 27th, 2011 at 8:19 pm

    Do you have an origin for the expression : “to go pie” used when one has lost all their money playing at mah jongg?

  5. Mark Holroyd:

    January 8th, 2012 at 5:11 am

    As a trained compositor and letterpress printer we always spelt ‘pi’ not ‘pie’. ‘Pica’ is a unit of measurement used in compositing not a style of type.
    Letterpress printing has it’s own unique system of measurement based on the one inch measurement which is subdivided into points. A ‘pica’ is equivalent to one sixth of an inch or twelve ‘points’, their being seventy two ‘points’ to one inch.

  6. Karen Shotting:

    April 20th, 2014 at 4:44 pm

    I like the George Ade reference. He also used it in “The Honest Effort to Go the Distance and Then the Melancholy Fluke” in “Breaking into Society” (1902). “Consequently he would Stick, with his Breastbone against the Railing, and continue to hoist until he was Pie-Eyed.”

  7. KatieC:

    October 8th, 2014 at 7:43 pm

    Well, how much disbelief there must be of the trained letterpress printer when he writes “it’s” for “its” and “their” instead of “there”…

  8. Marg C:

    April 27th, 2015 at 7:37 pm

    One Hindi word for drunk is “Piye huye.” Did they get that from the colonial English, or did the English adopt it?

  9. Roger:

    December 1st, 2015 at 9:05 am

    When working with hot metal moveable type, a non-standard character is known as a pi character (maybe due to the mathematical symbol). If the compositor dropped the type tray on the floor the mixed up letters were “pied”. The unlucky person who had to sort out the resultant mess of tiny letters and symbols ended up pi-eyed – unable to focus with sore eyes.

  10. Paul:

    September 25th, 2017 at 7:52 am

    My mom used to call me pied-eyed as a child when I looked tired.

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