Picket

How to spell picket

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce picket

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does picket mean?

1. nounA person or group stationed outside a workplace during a strike to discourage others from entering or to protest.
2. nounA pointed wooden or metal stake driven into the ground, often used in a fence or barrier.
3. verbTo stand or march outside a workplace as a protest, especially during a strike.

Picket in a sentence

• noun

  The striking nurses formed a picket outside the hospital entrance.

• noun

  He sharpened each picket before hammering it into the soft earth.

• verb

  The teachers planned to picket the council offices on Monday.

• noun

  Delivery drivers refused to cross the picket at the factory gates.

• noun

  One loose picket had worked its way out of the garden fence.

• verb

  Campaigners arrived early to picket the head office before staff arrived.

Where does picket come from?

Language of origin: French

This word comes from the French piquet, a diminutive of pic, meaning a pointed tool or pike, and ultimately traces back to the verb piquer, 'to prick or pierce'. English borrowed it in the seventeenth century, first in a military sense: a piquet was a pointed wooden stake driven into the ground, often to tether horses or to form a defensive barrier. From the stake itself, the sense extended to the small body of troops posted as a lookout near such defences, and from that watchful, stationed group came the modern industrial meaning of workers standing outside a workplace during a strike. The same piquer root sits inside the English words 'pike', 'piquant', and 'pique', all carrying the idea of something sharp. The single 't' and the soft '-et' ending, rather than the fuller French '-quet', are the spelling details that trip people up.

How the word is built

• pick- (from French pic: a pointed tool or pike)
• -et (diminutive suffix: a little point)