picked

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pɪkt/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪkt

Verb

picked

1. simple past and past participle of pick

Adjective

picked (comparative more picked, superlative most picked)

1. (often in combinations) Having a pick, or a particular number/type of pick (in any sense of the word)
2. Chosen; selected.
3. (music) Played by picking the strings
4. (zoology, of fishes) Having a pike or spine on the back.

   the picked dogfish

5. (obsolete) fine; spruce; smart; precise; dainty
   • c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Loues Labour’s Lost”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i], line 13:

     He is too / picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were, / too peregrinate, as I may call it.

   • c. 1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Iohn”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i], line 193:

     Why then I suck my teeth and catechize / My picked man of countries:

6. (obsolete) pointed; sharp
   • [1611?], Homer, “(please specify |book=I to XXIV)”, in Geo[rge] Chapman, transl., The Iliads of Homer Prince of Poets. […], London: […] Nathaniell Butter, →OCLC; The Iliads of Homer, Prince of Poets, […], new edition, volumes (please specify the book number), London: Charles Knight and Co., […], 1843, →OCLC:

     […] an useful bow a skilful bowyer wrought, / Which picked and polished both the ends he hid with horns of gold.

     The spelling has been modernized.

   • 1707, J[ohn] Mortimer, The Whole Art of Husbandry; or, The Way of Managing and Improving of Land. […], 2nd edition, London: […] J[ohn] H[umphreys] for H[enry] Mortlock […], and J[onathan] Robinson […], published 1708, →OCLC:

     A very good way to take them, is to drive a stake into the ground about four foot high above the surface of the earth: Let the stake be made picked at the top, that the jay may not settle on it.

Derived terms

• hand-picked
• picked-strings

 

References

• “picked”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.