Definition of
Piece
- (noun, artifact) a portable gun
- (noun, artifact) game equipment consisting of an object used in playing certain board games
he sacrificed a piece to get a strategic advantage - (noun, artifact) a work of art of some artistic value
it is not known who created this piece - (noun, artifact) a separate part of a whole
- (noun, artifact) an item that is an instance of some type
she bought a lovely piece of china - (noun, attribute) a distance
- (noun, communication) an artistic or literary composition
the children acted out a comic piece to amuse the guests - (noun, communication) a musical work that has been created
- (noun, event) an instance of some kind
he had a bit of good luck - (noun, food) a serving that has been cut from a larger portion
a slice of bread - (noun, object) a portion of a natural object
he needed a piece of granite - (noun, possession) a share of something
- (noun, time) a period of indeterminate length (usually short) marked by some action or condition
I need to rest for a piece
a spell of good weather
a patch of bad weather - (verb, change) repair by adding pieces
- (verb, consumption) eat intermittently; take small bites of
She never eats a full meal--she just nibbles - (verb, contact) join during spinning
- (verb, contact) to join or unite the pieces of
- (verb, creation) create by putting components or members together
He tacked together some verses
They set up a committee
via WordNet, Princeton University
Synonyms of Piece
art object, assemble, bit, composition, firearm, man, musical composition, nibble, objet d'art, opus, part, patch, pick, piece of music, put together, set up, slice, small-arm, spell, tack, tack together, while
Alternate forms of Piece
Derivations: piece
Hyponyms: .22, acicula, adagio, afterpiece, allegretto, allegro, andante, arrangement, article, autoloader, bagatelle, base, beam, black, body part, canon, capriccio, checker, chequer, chess piece, chessman, cold snap, cold spell, comfit, compound, confect, confection, configure, confuse, corner, corpus, craton, cutlet, cutting, divertimento, duet, duette, duo, escallop, etude, fantasia, filet, fillet, fish filet, fish fillet, fragment, handgun, hiatus, hot spell, hunk, idyl, idyll, incidental music, intermezzo, introit, jumble, larghetto, largo, lump, medley, mix up, morceau, motet, movement, musical arrangement, musical passage, muzzle loader, nocturne, notturno, nub, octet, octette, passage, pastiche, pastoral, pastorale, piece of cloth, piece of leather, piece of material, pistol, potpourri, program music, programme music, quartet, quartette, quintet, quintette, realisation, realization, reassemble, repeater, repeating firearm, rifle, rig up, riot gun, scallop, scattergun, scollop, scrap, segment, self-loader, septet, septette, serenade, sestet, sextet, sextette, shard, sheet music, sherd, shooting iron, shotgun, side arm, slice, smoothbore, snap, snip, snippet, snipping, solo, song, spindle, strip, stub, study, suite, symphonic poem, tile, toccata, tone poem, trio, twenty-two, vamp, vamp up, virtu, vocal, white, world
Hypernyms: bring together, bushel, case, conjoin, create, creation, distance, doctor, eat, example, fix, furbish up, game equipment, gun, helping, instance, item, join, make, mend, music, part, percentage, portion, repair, restore, serving, share, splice, thing, time, touch on, work of art
Origin of the word Piece
- early 13c., "fixed amount, measure, portion," from O.Fr. piece (11c.), from V.L. *pettia, probably from Gaulish (cf. Welsh peth "thing," Breton pez "piece"), from O.Celt. base *pett-. Sense of "portable firearm" first recorded 1580s; that of "chessman" is from 1562. Meaning "person regarded as a sex object" is first recorded 1785 (cf. piece… more
via Online Etymology Dictionary, ©2001 Douglas Harper