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Of U.S. origin, the slang noun piehole designates a person’s mouth.
—British-English synonym: cakehole.
The noun piehole occurs, for example, in the following from Washed up, by the U.S. comedian Rich Hall (born 1954), published in The Guardian (London and Manchester, England) of Saturday 1st April 1995 [page 98, column 2]:
I dragged myself downstairs to a hotel lobby. In a corner bar I overheard a young couple talking animatedly.
“Excuse me,” I asked politely. “Could you tell me where I am?”
The girl turned curtly and gave me the kind of look you’d get from the curator of a museum if you’d mistaken a Fabergé egg for Chuck Berry’s kidney stone.
“Shut your pie-hole, snorkel-boy,” she said, which didn’t give me much to go on.
These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the noun piehole that I have found:
1-: From Christine (New York: The Viking Press, 1983), by the U.S. author of novels of horror and suspense Stephen King (born 1947) [chapter 5: How We Got to Darnell’s, page 53]:
I suddenly grabbed Darnell’s arm. “Sir?”
He swung around on me. I find that the more I dislike adults, the more apt I am to call them Sir.
“What?”
“Those men over there are smoking. You better tell them to stop.” I pointed to the guys at the poker table. Smoke hung over the table in a blue haze.
Darnell looked at them, then back at me. His face was very solemn. “You trying to help your buddy right out of here, Junior?”
“No,” I said. “Sir.”
“Then shut your pie-hole.”
2-: From an interview of the U.S. musician Glenn Frey (1948-2016), a founding member of the rock band Eagles—interview by Wayne Robins, published in Newsday (New York City, New York, USA) of Sunday 25th August 1985 [Part II, page 11, column 1]:
While fans made Eagles albums such as “Desperado,” “One of These Nights” and “Hotel California” some of the biggest hits of the 1970s, critics were often contemptuous of the band, taking their perfectionism for slick contrivance. If critics hated the Eagles, then the feeling was often mutual.
“We had a list,” Frey said. “We had a whole list of people who were gonna get five right in the pie hole.” He held up a clenched fist to his mouth to illustrate what his phrase meant. “We had a five in the lips list, and it was quite a long list.”
3-: From a letter to the Editor, by one Jon Zehnder, published in The Salina Journal (Salina, Kansas, USA) of Sunday 22nd March 1992 [page 4, column 2]:
If you support an additional sin tax on cigarettes, then you may want to consider supporting additional sin taxes on those greasy cheeseburgers and fries that many people wolf down on their lunch breaks. I don’t think those of us who eat sensibly should subsidize the health care costs of those who clog up their arteries with fats […].
[…]
[…] Even though I’m a smoker, I take good care of myself in other ways. I work out several times a week. I eat healthy foods. […]
[…] It amazes me when I light up in a restaurant after eating grilled chicken to see some overweight guy, staring a coronary in the face, scowl at me while he jabs a fatty hunk of beef flesh into his pie hole.
4-: From a review of This Boy’s Life (1993), a U.S. film starring Robert De Niro, Ellen Barkin and Leonardo DiCaprio—review by Mike Clark, Gannett News Service, published in The Bellingham Herald (Bellingham, Washington, USA) of Saturday 17th April 1993 [page C1, column 5]:
De Niro’s “Dwight” character […] is a chillingly recognizable jerk—calling coffee “java” and a mouth a “pie hole” (as in “Shut your pie hole”), stealing his stepson’s paper route money, then refusing to shell out for gym shoes.
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