In a pickle

Stuck in a messy or tricky situation, tangled up with no clear fix.

From 16th-century England, possibly tied to Dutch 'in de pekel'-in brine-for a mess, as in Shakespeare's 1611 'Tempest' where a drunk's 'in a pickle. ' A 1585 text uses it too. By the 19th century, Dickens' 1836 'Pickwick' boosted it, growing into a tangy idiom of sticky straits.