Meaning of pick | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A tool used for digging; a pickaxe.
2. A surname.
3. An anchor.
   slang
4. To refute or find flaws in by close examination: The lawyer picked the testimony apart.
5. A pointed hammer used for dressing millstones.
6. To tease or bully.
7. A tool for unlocking a lock without the original key; a lock pick, picklock.
8. To sort out or examine item by item: picked over the grapes before buying them.
9. A comb with long widely spaced teeth, for use with tightly curled hair.
10. To select with great care.
11. A tool used for strumming the strings of a guitar; a plectrum.
12. To seek and discover flaws or a flaw in: picked holes in the argument.
13. A pike or spike; the sharp point fixed in the center of a buckler.
    obsolete
14. To find fault in a petty way; nitpick.
15. A choice; ability to choose.
16. To find passage and make careful progress through it: picked her way down the slope.
17. That which would be picked or chosen first; the best.
18. To criticize sharply.
19. Pasture; feed, for animals.
    Australia
20. To throw (a shuttle) across a loom.
21. A screen.
22. pick someone's brains, to obtain information or ideas by questioning someone closely.
23. An offensive tactic in which a player stands so as to block a defender from reaching a teammate.
24. An interception.
25. A good defensive play by an infielder.
26. A pickoff.
27. 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.
    dated
28. That which is picked in, as with a pointed pencil, to correct an unevenness in a picture.
29. 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.

Equivalents

Examples

“It's better to amble around, drop the "pick" for a lunchtime swim or beachcomb, then find a nice anchorage for the night.”

“Take down my buckler […] and grind the pick on 't.”

“France and Russia have the pick of our stables.”

“‘She's all African grass and Brahmans. There's not a blade of native pick left, except on the ridges.’”

“The judicious use of fire could have protected valuable nut trees, promoted the growth and seeding of grass and, if practised at a distance from their camps, even attracted herbivores to the sweet young pick.”

“If it be in the smallest degree gritty, it clogs the form, and consequently produces a thick and imperfect impression; no pains should, therefore, be spared to render it perfectly smooth; it may then be made to work as clear and free from picks”

“so many picks to an inch”

CEFR level