picket

Etymology

It is borrowed from French piquet (“pointed stake”),^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]} formed from piquer (“to prick, pierce”) and the diminutive suffix -et.^[2][6][8] The verb is in turn from pic (“pike, pick”),^{[9][10][11][12]} and is related to pike, pick and pique.^[4][3][8][5] The French noun is recorded for a pointed stake from 1380, for a stake in a stockade from 1611, and for both a stake to tether a horse and a military detachment from 1718.^[2] The English verb is a conversion of the noun,^[2][4][3] and the OED compares Middle French piqueter (“to mark out a camp with pickets”), from the late 16th century.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

A pointed stake driven into the ground for a fence or stockade or to mark a position: 1687, in J. Taylor's Tresaurarium Mathematicae, the date Merriam-Webster gives too.^[2][6] Barnhart and the Oxford Dictionary of English put first a stake on which a soldier had to stand on one foot as a punishment, recorded in a royal proclamation of 1690.^[4][10][2] Etymonline dates the noun to the 1680s.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The word began as a military term for stakes, used in fences, in surveying, against cavalry and in the punishment called the picket.^[4][2][3] The sense "small detachment of troops posted to watch for the enemy" is recorded from 1702 in the revised OED,^[2] from 1761 in Etymonline and Barnhart;^[3][4] Barnhart thinks it was borrowed from an older French sense, a group of horsemen ready to leave at a signal, their horses being tied to a picket,^[4] and Hoad also explains it by the horses tied to stakes.^[8] Weekley compares the military senses of post.^[11] The use for people stationed outside a workplace during a strike, to dissuade others from going in, is first recorded in 1818 for the noun and 1787 for the verb in the OED,^[2] while Etymonline, Barnhart and Weekley date it, and picketing, to 1867.^[3][4][11] Picket fence is recorded from 1817 and picket line from 1856 in the military sense, and of strikes by 1945.^[3] The verb began with tethering a horse to a picket (1729) and enclosing a place with stakes (1745), then posting soldiers as a picket (1775–78).^[2][4][3] In the United States a picket was also, from 1848, an elongated rifle bullet.^[2]

Timeline

• 1687 – a pointed stake for a fence or stockade, or for marking a position.^[2][6]
• 1690 – a stake on which an offender was made to stand on one foot, as a military punishment.^[2][4]
• 1702 – a small detachment of troops sent out to watch for the enemy.^[2] Etymonline and Barnhart date this sense to 1761.^[3][4]
• 1729 – verb, to tether a horse to a picket.^[2]
• 1745 – verb, to enclose or fortify with pickets.^[2][4][6]
• 1775 – verb, to post soldiers as a picket.^[3][4]
• 1787 – verb, to surround or occupy a place as a picket in a dispute.^[2]
• 1817 – picket fence.^[3]
• 1818 – noun, a person or group stationed outside a workplace during a strike.^[2] Etymonline and Barnhart date this sense to 1867.^[3][4]
• 1848 – an elongated rifle bullet (chiefly US, now historical).^[2]
• 1867 – verb, intransitive, to act as a picket in a dispute.^[2][4][3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A pointed stake or post driven into the ground, as part of a fence, to mark a point in surveying, or to tether an animal.^[7][6][2]
2. A person or group standing outside a workplace or other building during a strike or protest, to persuade others not to enter: Pickets gathered at the factory gates at dawn.^[7][6][2]
3. Also spelled picquet: a small detachment of soldiers placed to give warning of an enemy's approach.^[7][6][2]
4. (historical) A military punishment in which the offender stood on one foot on the top of a stake; the stake itself.^[6][2][9]

Verb

1. To stand outside a workplace or other building as a picket, or to post pickets there: The union picketed the warehouse for a week.^[7][6][2]
2. To guard a place with soldiers posted as a picket, or to post soldiers as a picket.^[7][6][2]
3. To enclose, fence or fortify with pickets.^[6][2][9]
4. To tether an animal, especially a horse, to a picket.^[6][2][9]

Word family

• picketer
• counterpicket
• unpicketed
• picket boat
• picket line
• picket fence

Related words

• pike
• pick
• pique

Usage notes

A separate, now obsolete picket was a name for the common tern, recorded in 1813; its origin is uncertain, perhaps from the pick of pickmaw.^[2][6]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ a b c d e f Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
8. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b c Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
12. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.