picked

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pɪkt/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪkt

Verb

picked

1. simple past tense and past participle of pick

Adjective

picked (comparative more picked, superlative most picked)

1. Chosen; selected.
2. (zoology, of fishes) Having a pike or spine on the back.

   the picked dogfish

3. (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, 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:

4. (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, […], volume (please specify the book number), new edition, 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.

   • 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

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for picked in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913)