Search the Dictionary

Pointed; sharp. "Picked and polished." Chapman. Let the stake be made picked at the top. Mortimer.

Fineness; spruceness; smartness. [Obs.] Too much pickedness is not manly. B. Jonson.

Picked out; picked open.

ause to stand up, as the bristles of an angry hog; -- sometimes with up. Now for the bare-picked bone of majesty Doth dogged war bristle his angry crest. Shak. Boy, bristle thy courage up. Shak.

Selected from a number; picked out; choice. Seven hundred chosen men left-handed. Judg. xx. 16.

nt passes along a wire or rail laid in an underground conduit, from which the current is "picked up" by a plow or other device fixed to the car or electric locomotive. Hence Conduit railway.

e genus Cucumis, esp. Cucumis sativus, the unripe fruit of which is eaten either fresh or picked. Also, similar plants or fruits of several other genera. See below. Bitter cucumber (Bot.), the Citrullus or Cucumis Colocynthis. SeeColocynth. -- Cucumber beetle. (Zoöl.) (a) A small, black flea-beetle (Crepidodera cucume…

r eat away by scraping or continuous biting with the teeth; to nibble at. His bones clean picked; his very bones they gnaw. Dryden.

A body of picked troops; as, "The Household Guards."

acter, color, qualities, conduct, manners, and the like; to counterfeit; to copy. A place picked out by choice of best alive The Nature's work by art can imitate. Spenser. This hand appeared a shining sword to weild, And that sustained an imitated shield. Dryden.

Pieces of old cable or old cordage, used for making gaskets, mats, swabs, etc., and when picked to pieces, forming oakum for filling the seams of ships.

Large lumps picked out of the sieve, in dressing ore.

a vessel which is to be recalked. Meaking iron (Naut.), the tool with which old oakum is picked out of a vessel's seams.

hence, also, the meal furnished at such a dining room. Shak. All the odd words they have picked up in a coffeehouse, or a gaming ordinary, are produced as flowers of style. Swift. He exacted a tribute for licenses to hawkers and peddlers and to ordinaries. Bancroft.

A native metal or its compound with the rock in which it occurs, after it has been picked over to throw out what is worthless.

rable; to cull; as, to pick one's company; to pick one's way; -- often with out. "One man picked out of ten thousand." Shak.

One that is picked up, as a meal hastily got up for the occasion, a chance acquaintance, an informal game, etc.

That which is, or may be, picked or gleaned.

begging, or vagrancy; victuals of any kind; food; supplies. [Slang] Swift. So long as he picked from the filth his prog. R. Browning.

t is, in large quantities. The quantity of extensive and curious information which he had picked up during many months of desultory, but not unprofitable, study. Macaulay. Quantity of estate (Law), its time of continuance, or degree of interest, as in fee, for life, or for years. Wharton (Law Dict. ) -- Quantity of mat…