Gherkin
name, noun, slang ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A small cucumber, often pickled whole.
- 2 small prickly cucumber wordnet
- 3 Pickled cucumber regardless of size; a pickle Ireland, UK
- 4 any of various small cucumbers pickled whole wordnet
- 5 The penis. slang
"“Even my gherkin is sorry, and it didn't talk shit about anybody," persists Adrian. The edge of Titus's mouth quivers in laughter."
- 1 Alternative letter-case form of Gherkin. alt-of
- 2 The building at 30 St Mary Axe, a distinctively-shaped skyscraper in London, England UK, informal
Example
More examples"Fear the revenge of the gherkin!"
Etymology
From a form of Dutch gurk, an archaic variant of augurk (“small pickled cucumber”), from Low German, from Middle Low German agurke, augurke, probably via Slavic (compare Polish ogórek), from Byzantine Greek ἀγγούριον (angoúrion, “cucumber”). The underlying Dutch form may be a diminutive (gurkijn) or perhaps more probably the plural (gurken), which was then associated with the English suffix -kin (itself incidentally from Dutch or Low German). Compare German Gurke.
After the shape of the building, which is like that of a gherkin.
Related phrases
More for "gherkin"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.