picket

English

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• Audio (US)

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• Rhymes: -ɪkɪt

A white picket fence (def. 1)

Pickets (noun def. 5) picket (verb) in front of the BBC during a strike in May 2005.

Noun

picket (plural pickets)

1. A stake driven into the ground.

   A picket fence.

2. (historical) 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. (military) Soldiers or troops placed on a line forward of a position to warn against an enemy advance. It can also refer to any unit (for example, an aircraft or ship) performing a similar function.
   • 1990, Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game, Folio Society 2010, p. 59:

     So confident was he that he ignored the warning of his two British advisers to post pickets to watch the river, and even withdrew those they had placed there.

5. A sentry. Can be used figuratively.
   • 1907, Harold Bindloss, chapter 26, The Dust of Conflict^[1]:

     Maccario, it was evident, did not care to take the risk of blundering upon a picket, and a man led them by twisting paths until at last the hacienda rose blackly before them.

6. A protester positioned outside an office, workplace etc. during a strike (usually in plural); also the protest itself.

   Pickets normally endeavor to be non-violent.

7. (card games) The card game piquet.

Translations

a stake driven into the ground

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 樴 (cmn) (zhí)

• Finnish: paalu (fi)
• Icelandic: staur (is) m, rimill (is) m, pílári í girðingu (is) m

• Maori: wāwā (mi)
• Norwegian: staur (no) m
• Romanian: pichet (ro) n
• Russian: кол (ru) (kol) m , штаке́тина (ru) (štakétina) f 

Soldiers or troops

• Estonian: pikett (et)
• Finnish: etuvartio
• Icelandic: hervörður (is) m

• Russian: (dated) аванпост (ru) (avanpóst) m , кордон (ru) (kordón) m , дозор (ru) (dozór) m , форпост (ru) (forpóst) m , пикет (ru) (pikét) m 

protester positioned outside an office, workplace etc. during a strike

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 糾察隊 (cmn), 纠察队 (cmn) (jiūcháduì)

• Finnish: mielenosoitus (fi)
• Icelandic: verkfallsvörður (is) m

• Japanese: ピケット (ja) (piketto)
• Russian: пикетчик (ru) (pikétčik) m , пикетчица (ru) (pikétčica) f 
• Spanish: piquete (es)

Verb

picket (third-person singular simple present pickets, present participle picketing, simple past and past participle picketed)

1. (intransitive) To protest, organized by a labour union, typically in front of the location of employment.
2. (transitive) To enclose or fortify with pickets or pointed stakes.
3. (transitive) To tether to, or as if to, a picket.

   to picket a horse

4. (transitive) To guard, as a camp or road, by an outlying picket.
5. (obsolete, transitive) To torture by forcing to stand with one foot on a pointed stake.

Derived terms

• picket line
• picketing
• unpicketed