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Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
pickelhaube

Prussian spiked helmet, 1875, from German Pickelhaube, from pickel "(ice)pick, pickaxe," + haube "hood, bonnet." But the German word is attested 17c., long before the helmet type came into use, and originally meant simply "helmet;" Palmer reports a German theory (Andresen) that it is a folk-etymology: "as if from Pickel and haube, a cap or coif[;] more correctly written Biekelhaube, [it] is for Beckelhaube, a word most probably derived from becken, a basin."

Wiktionary
pickelhaube

n. (context historical English) A spiked helmet worn by German troops, especially during the First World War. (from 19th c.)

WordNet
pickelhaube

n. a spiked helmet worn by German soldiers

Wikipedia
Pickelhaube

The Pickelhaube (plural Pickelhauben; from the German Pickel, "point" or "pickaxe", and Haube, "bonnet", a general word for "headgear"), also Pickelhelm, was a spiked helmet worn in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by German military, firefighters, and police. Although typically associated with the Prussian army, the helmet was widely imitated by other armies during this period.

Usage examples of "pickelhaube".

When her son on a visit to Berlin in 1890 was made honorary colonel of a Prussian regiment, she wrote to him: “And so my Georgie boy has become a real live filthy blue-coated Pickelhaube German soldier!

It was several minutes before Tommy, wearing the dead German's spiked pickelhaube, appeared at the top of the stone steps.