“Shakespeare,” writes Sam Dean, “is often credited with inventing the phrase ‘in a pickle’ in “The Tempest,” but even there, the usage seems to be closer to another common meaning of ‘pickled’: to be drunk, soused, sloshed, blotto, or whichever preferred term you use for alcoholic inebriation. Here’s the Shakespearean exchange cited, again, in the OED: Alonso: And Trinculo is reeling ripe: where should they Find this grand liquor that hath gilded ‘em?– How camest thou in this
