picket

English

Etymology

A white picket fence (sense 1)

Pickets (noun sense 6) picketing (verb sense 1) in front of the BBC’s Broadcasting House in Bristol, UK, during a strike in May 2005.

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

Pronunciation

(Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /ˈpɪkɪt/
Audio (GA) (file)
Rhymes: -ɪkɪt
Hyphenation: pick‧et

Noun

picket (countable and uncountable, plural pickets)

A stake driven into the ground.
a picket fence
(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.
A tool in mountaineering that is driven into the snow and used as an anchor or to arrest falls.
(military) 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.
- 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.
(sometimes figurative) A sentry.
- 1907, Harold Bindloss, chapter 26, in The Dust of Conflict:
  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.
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.
- 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XXII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, OCLC 4293071:
  In the autumn there was a row at some cement works about the unskilled labour men. A union had just been started for them and all but a few joined. One of these blacklegs was laid for by a picket and knocked out of time.
(card games, uncountable) The card game piquet.

Derived terms

picket boat
picket line
picket pin
picket rope

Translations

stake driven into the ground

Arabic: وَتَد‎ (ar) (watad), شَاخِص‎ (šāḵiṣ), لِكَاز‎ (likāz)
Bulgarian: кол (bg) m (kol)
Chinese:
Mandarin: 樴 (zh) (zhí)
Czech: kolík (cs) m
Dutch: piket (nl) n
Esperanto: paliso
Finnish: paalu (fi)
French: piquet (fr) m
German: Pfosten (de) m, Pfahl (de) m, Zaunlatte f, Latte (de) f
Icelandic: staur m, rimill m, pílári í girðingu m
Italian: paletto (it) m, piolo (it) m, picchetto (it) m
Khmer: រ (km) (rɔɔ)
Macedonian: кол m (kol), ко́лец m (kólec)
Maori: wāwā
Norwegian: staur (no) m
Polish: sztacheta (pl) f
Romanian: pichet (ro) n
Russian: кол (ru) m (kol), штаке́тина (ru) f (štakétina)

type of punishment

Finnish: paaluun paneminen

mountaineering tool

Bulgarian: пикел m (pikel)
Finnish: lumikiila

soldiers placed forward of position

Bulgarian: дозор m (dozor)
Estonian: pikett
Finnish: etuvartio
German: Vorposten (de) m
Icelandic: hervörður m
Italian: picchetto (it) m
Macedonian: ко́рдон m (kórdon)
Russian: (dated) аванпо́ст (ru) m (avanpóst), кордо́н (ru) m (kordón), дозо́р (ru) m (dozór), форпо́ст (ru) m (forpóst), пике́т (ru) m (pikét)

sentry — see sentry

protester outside a workplace during a strike

Chinese:
Mandarin: 糾察隊／纠察队 (jiūcháduì)
Finnish: mielenosoittaja (fi)
German: Streikposten m
Icelandic: verkfallsvörður m
Italian: picchetto (it) m
Japanese: ピケット (piketto)
Russian: пике́тчик (ru) m (pikétčik), пике́тчица (ru) f (pikétčica)
Spanish: piquete (es)

card game — see piquet

Verb

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

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

Derived terms

picketing (noun)
unpicketed

German

Pronunciation

Audio (file)

Verb

picket

second-person plural subjunctive I of picken