Pie

Pie is a table or rule which was used in the old Roman offices previous to the Reformation, showing in a technical way how to find out the service which is to be read upon each day, and corresponds to what the Greeks called πίναξ, or the index (literally a plank, by metonymy a painted table or picture); and because indexes or tables of books were formed into square figures resembling pictures or painters' tables hung up in a frame, these likewise were called πίνακες, or, being marked only with the first letters of the word, πἰ, or pies. Pie is the familiar English name for the Romish pica (ordinal, or service-book), which perhaps cam'e from the ignorance of the friars, who have thrust in many barbarous words into the liturgies. Some say that the word pye is derived from littera picata, a great black letter in the beginning of some new order in the prayer, and among printers that term is still used, the pica type. See Procter. Book of Common Prayer; Eadie, Eccles. Cyclop. s.v