English Explanatory Dictionary

picket

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. A stake driven into the ground.
  2. A type of punishment by which an offender had to rest his or her entire body weight on the top of a small stake.
  3. A tool in mountaineering that is driven into the snow and used as an anchor or to arrest falls.
  4. One of the soldiers or troops placed on a line forward of a position to warn against an enemy advance; or any unit (for example, an aircraft or ship) performing a similar function.
  5. A sentry.
  6. A protester positioned outside an office, workplace etc. during a strike (usually in plural); also the protest itself.
  7. The card game piquet.
verb
  1. To protest, organized by a labour union, typically in front of the location of employment.
  2. To enclose or fortify with pickets or pointed stakes.
  3. To tether to, or as if to, a picket.
  4. To guard, as a camp or road, by an outlying picket.
  5. To torture by forcing to stand with one foot on a pointed stake.
name
  1. A surname.

Pronunciation

/ˈpɪk.ɪt/ En-us-picket.ogg

Word forms

picket pickets picketing picketting picketed picketted

Etymology

From French piquet, from piquer (“to pierce”).

Derived words

counterpicket flying picket outpicket picketable picket boat picket bullet picketee picketer picket fence picket-house picket house picketless picket line picketmate picket pin picket rope screw picket star picket white picket fence picketing unpicketed
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
Back to search All on P Russian dictionary Dahl dictionary