pick

⛏️

Meaning

1. A tool used for digging; a pickaxe.
2. (slang) An anchor.
3. A pointed hammer used for dressing millstones.
4. A tool for unlocking a lock without the original key; a lock pick, picklock.
5. A comb with long widely spaced teeth, for use with tightly curled hair.
6. A tool used for strumming the strings of a guitar; a plectrum.
7. (obsolete) A pike or spike; the sharp point fixed in the center of a buckler.
8. A choice; ability to choose.
9. That which would be picked or chosen first; the best.
10. Pasture; feed, for animals.
11. A screen.
12. An offensive tactic in which a player stands so as to block a defender from reaching a teammate.
13. An interception.
14. A good defensive play by an infielder.
15. A pickoff.
16. A particle of ink or paper embedded in the hollow of a letter, filling up its face, and causing a spot on a printed sheet.
17. That which is picked in, as with a pointed pencil, to correct an unevenness in a picture.
18. The blow that drives the shuttle, used in calculating the speed of a loom (in picks per minute); hence, in describing the fineness of a fabric, a weft thread.

nip off

snap at

gnaw at

substract

make a choice

pluck off

guitar pick

pick by hand

pick fruit

pluck out

prize open

pry out

scrape up

snatch away

stick into

swear out

vote in

banana bunch

go looking for

cut up fine

wrench open

dig around in

decide for

put one’s hand into

gather flowers

elite group

pick-off

gad picker

help oneself to

filling yarn

pick mattock

steel pick head

mattock hoe

select elect

gnaw round

nongorwa

gouge out

Frequency

Pronounced as (IPA)

/pɪk/

From Middle English piken, picken, pikken, from Old English *piccian, *pīcian (attested in pīcung (“a pricking”)), and pīcan, pȳcan (“to pick, prick, pluck”), both from Proto-West Germanic *pikkōn, from Proto-Germanic *pikkōną (“to pick, peck, prick, knock”), from Proto-Indo-European *bew-, *bu- (“to make a dull, hollow sound”). Doublet of pitch and peck. Cognate with Dutch pikken (“to pick”), German picken (“to pick, peck”), Old Norse pikka, pjakka (whence Icelandic pikka (“to pick, prick”), Swedish picka (“to pick, peck”)).