Crossword clues for picket
picket
- One standing in a strike zone?
- Striker, often
- A person employed to watch for something to happen
- A wooden strip forming part of a fence
- A vehicle performing sentinel duty
- A detachment of troops guarding an army from surprise attack
- A protester posted by a labor organization outside a place of work
- Choose out-of-this-world person to encourage workers to strike
- Choose English team's first striker
- Choice tips from expert getting post
- One way to deal with scab or another, they say?
- Wooden fencing stake
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1680s, "pointed stake (for defense against cavalry, etc.)," from French piquet "pointed stake," from piquer "to pierce" (see pike (n.2)). Sense of "troops posted to watch for enemy" first recorded 1761; that of "striking workers stationed to prevent others from entering a factory" is from 1867. Picket line is 1856 in the military sense, 1945 of labor strikes.
1745, "to enclose with pickets," from picket (n.). The sense in labor strikes, protests, etc., is attested from 1867. Related: Picketed; picketing.
Wiktionary
n. 1 A stake driven into the ground. 2 (context historical English) A type of punishment by which an offender had to rest his or her entire body weight on the top of a small stake. 3 A tool in mountaineering that is driven into the snow and used as an anchor or to arrest falls. 4 (context military English) Soldiers or troops placed on a line forward of a position to warn against an enemy advance. It can also refer to any unit (for example, an aircraft or ship) performing a similar function. 5 A sentry. Can be used figuratively. vb. 1 (context intransitive English) To protest, organized by a labour union, typically in front of the location of employment. 2 (context transitive English) To enclose or fortify with pickets or pointed stakes. 3 (context transitive English) To tether to, or as if to, a picket. 4 (context transitive English) To guard, as a camp or road, by an outlying picket. 5 (context obsolete transitive English) To torture by forcing to stand with one foot on a pointed stake.
WordNet
n. a person employed to watch for something to happen [syn: lookout, lookout man, sentinel, sentry, watch, spotter, scout]
a detachment of troops guarding an army from surprise attack
a protester posted by a labor organization outside a place of work
a vehicle performing sentinel duty
a wooden strip forming part of a fence [syn: pale]
v. serve as pickets or post pickets; "picket a business to protest the lay-offs"
fasten with a picket; "picket the goat"
Wikipedia
Picket may refer to:
- A type of snow protection used by climbers as an anchor
- Picket fence
- Screw picket, a tethering device
- Picket line, to tether horses
-
Picket (military), a small temporary military post closer to the enemy than the main formation
- Radar picket, a variation of the above.
- Picket boat, a small military boat
- Picket (punishment), a 16th and 17th century military punishment
- Picket a fairy chess piece,
- Picket Pool, a micro betting pool
- Picketing, a form of protest
The picket, picquet or piquet was a form of military punishment in vogue in the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe. It consisted of the offender being forced to stand on the narrow flat top of a peg for a period of time. The punishment died out in the 18th century and was so unfamiliar by 1800 that when the then governor of Trinidad, Sir Thomas Picton, ordered Luisa Calderon, a woman of European and African ancestry to be so punished, he was accused by public opinion in England of inflicting a torture akin to impalement. It was thought erroneously that the prisoner was forced to stand on the head of a pointed stake, and this error was repeated in the New English Dictionary.
The punishment required placing a wooden peg (for the sort used for tents or for a line for cavalry horses — "picket" etc. were originally alternative names for such pegs) in the ground with the exposed end facing upward. The malefactor was typically a private soldier who had disobeyed orders. One wrist was suspended from a tree by a rope, while the sole or heel of the opposite bare foot was balanced atop the peg. The top of the peg was narrow enough to cause considerable discomfort, but not sharp enough to draw blood. To relieve pressure upon a foot, the prisoner relegated all his weight to the wrist, which could only be relieved by shifting weight back onto the other foot.
The procedure could be continued for a few hours, to as much as a day or two. The punishment generally did not cause lasting physical harm. A much more severe and physically damaging suspension torture is known as Strappado.
Picket (archaically, picquet [variant form piquet]) is a soldier, or small unit of soldiers, placed on a line forward of a position to warn against an enemy advance. It can also refer to any unit (for example, an aircraft or ship) performing a similar function.
Usage examples of "picket".
The ionization detectors had given no warning because the Molt was already sited, a picket waiting near the Oltenian base on a likely course of advance.
In the dim and unsteady light of emergency generators, a sullen group of medical workers was picketing the casualty department, and there was an angry crowd of relatives and parents trying to force their way through with plague-sick people on makeshift stretchers.
The Teamsters have been picketing against the UAES--the United Alliance of Extras and Stagehands.
It would be nice to have the opposition on the defensive when they start picketing us.
Court invalidated laws against peaceful picketing, including the carrying of signs and banners.
Shortly thereafter a divided Court ruled that peaceful picketing may be enjoined where the labor dispute has been attended by violence on a serious scale.
Indeed, the distinction between prevention and punishment appears to have played little or no part in determining when picketing may be forbidden in labor disputes.
Specifically, the Court in the Senn Case gave its approval to the application of a Wisconsin statute which authorized the giving of publicity to labor disputes, declared peaceful picketing and patrolling lawful, and prohibited the granting of injunctions against such conduct to a controversy in which the matter at issue was the refusal of a tiling contractor employing nonunion workmen to sign a closed shop agreement unless a provision requiring him to abstain from working in his business as a tile layer or helper should be eliminated.
Cases disposing of the contention that restraints on picketing amount to a denial of freedom of speech and constitute therefore a deprivation of liberty without due process of law have been set forth under Amendment I.
At last, when I reach the first advanced picket of the Austrians, the horse is stopped, and I get off his back thanking God.
Its pickets were eight feet high, with an ornate torsade along the bottom and wickedly pointed atop.
Between the twelve uninitiates and the mass stretched, as in the other yard, a line of pickets.
They rode out past the pickets and campfires of Cambridge and at Framingham stopped to see for themselves the guns from Ticonderoga, Adams making careful note of the inventory--58 cannon ranging in size from 3- and 4-pounders to one giant 24-pounder that weighed more than two tons.
He roughly pushed Adelaide and Prickles around the fallen picket, and shoved them in through the cracked glass doors of the casualty department.
The pickets held back, but they watched him intently and closely, and as he stepped away from them down the corridor, following Adelaide, they stalked after him with hard and humorless faces.