2298: piker Apr 1, 2021

Seemingly unrelated to 'pike' would be the word 'piker', as in a miserly person, actually is related, but no one is quite sure how. Some hold that it goes by the sense of 'pike' as in a road, relating to the original sense of 'piker' as 'vagrant', though it has been written that in America at least it comes from the name of a county, Pike, Missouri. That said, the Middle English word 'piker' meant 'thief', in the sense of picking, which would be therefore at least not so directly related.

2297: turnpike Mar 31, 2021

The word 'pike' by itself refers to the point of a shaft, or often a whole spear, but it also led to 'turnpike'. The earlier, vaguer sense of the word was extended to any beam of wood, including those to make barricades for horses to keep them off certain roads. Eventually, this led to the sense of a toll on road, and the 'turnpike road' was just shortened to 'turnpike'.