Meaning of winkle-picker | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A person who harvests periwinkles (a kind of sea snail) to be eaten.
   Ireland, UK
2. An implement used to extract the flesh of a periwinkle from its shell.
3. A style of boot or shoe with a severely pointed toe, fashionable in the 1950s and 1960s.
   also, attributive

Examples

“[The girl] informed me that […] I had no right to wander at will upon the winkle-beds! Her brother, said she, was the watcher over this particular part of the Whitstable fishing-ground, beyond which he was the champion winkle-picker of the neighbourhood!”

“The most inveterate beachcomber and by far the speediest winkle picker in the village was ‘Euan, the son of Euan, the son of Euan’, the Gaelic pronunciation of whose name approximated to a long drawn-out yawn.”

“the first piece of writing he had ever done [was] a starkly rhymed description of his boyhood as a winkle-picker on the Welsh coast”

“Annie-John, the winkle picker, in men’s boots and a man’s overcoat went by with an empty bucket.”

““Anyway, she can’t have got much pleasure out of him. If it’s owt like the rest of him she’d need a winkle-picker to find it.””

“A few years ago she made the mistake of ordering fruit de mer at a restaurant there. The plate was covered five deep in shellfish. The dastardly waiter had maliciously omitted to supply a winkle-picker.”

“Get yourself a pin or a winkle picker, hoik them out [of their shells], dunk them in the shallot vinegar.”

“’[…] Clever bugger. He’s got us nice and tight in here. It’ll take a winkle-picker to get us out.’”

“winkle-picker toes; winkle-picker stilettos”

“Four children on the roundabout […] and two youths with heavy side-burns and stiff crew cuts, in black sweaters, drain-pipe jeans and winkle-pickers, made up the entire custom of the afternoon.”

“The “Mods” or “Moderns” wear sharply cut Italian‐style suits and long, pointed “winklepicker” shoes. They ride motor scooters fitted with scores of gleaming accessories.”

“Summer of 1955, Archie went to Fleet Street with his best winkle-pickers on, looking for work as a war correspondent.”

“Logan had dressed a little differently to the rest. It would be the flourish of a neck scarf maybe. Or a different cut to the boot. If everyone else was wearing a square toecap, nothing would do Logan Hartnett only to arrive into the [Café] Aliados in a winklepicker, and the sly puss on.”

CEFR level