picket

Meanings

Noun

  • A stake driven into the ground.
  • A type of punishment by which an offender had to rest his or her entire body weight on the top of a small stake.
  • A tool in mountaineering that is driven into the snow and used as an anchor or to arrest falls.
  • 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.
  • A sentry.
  • A protester positioned outside an office, workplace etc. during a strike (usually in plural); also the protest itself.
  • The card game piquet.

Verb

  • To protest, organized by a labour union, typically in front of the location of employment.
  • To enclose or fortify with pickets or pointed stakes.
  • To tether to, or as if to, a picket.
  • To guard, as a camp or road, by an outlying picket.
  • To torture by forcing to stand with one foot on a pointed stake.

Origin

  • From French piquet, from piquer.

Modern English dictionary

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