Pyke

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A long pointed weapon with a metal head on a shaft, used historically by soldiers ; a turnpike or toll road
2. A medieval spear-like weapon with an extended reach and sharp tip ; a tollway or highway where fees are collected
3. A pike-staffed lance employed in ancient warfare ; a toll-collecting road or thoroughfare

Etymology: "Pyke" is an obsolete spelling of "peek," and its history is a tangle of Middle English words for looking. The verb "peken," "piken," or "pyken" meant "to peep," and it seems to have been formed by fusing two older forms: "pepen," also meaning "to peep," and "keken" or "kiken," meaning "to keek," that is, to look or spy. In effect, English speakers blended "peep" and "keek" into a single sound-alike verb, with the meaning sitting somewhere between the two. There is a further possibility that the word is a metathetic alteration of "kepen," "kipen," or "kypen," which meant "to keep, look, observe, watch." Metathesis means that the sounds have swapped places, so that a form like "kepen" could have shifted toward "peken" over time. The word's roots may therefore include a verb that originally meant guarding or watching as much as peeping.