"prick" usually means to lightly pierce, or maybe not even pierce, just touch with a sharp point. pierce means the surface is broken (貫串） prick 好像你們『刺痛』的意思差不多,不必貫串到. if you prick someone with a needle, it will likely pierce their skin (but not necessarily!).

They both mean to penetrate something, but prick is on a smaller scale than pierce. No, they're not interchangable. There's a tiny differences between them. Prick is kind of like "stab," except the thing that stabs is very small. It refers to getting poked by something small like a pin or needle. Pierce means to penetrate or "force into." Bullets that can pierce into body armor are called armor piercing rounds because they can penetrate into the armor. You don't prick body armor, you penetrate it.

They are related concepts but there is a difference of degree of making a hole in something. You could say that the English knights were pierced by arrows at Agincourt. The arrows pierced their hearts and killed them. If the arrows had pricked them, the knights would have minor wounds and would be alive. So you can describe a prick as a very small pierce. ,

Prick is a fast, and small puncture. Pierce is a deep penetration.