picket

Meanings

Plural: pickets

Noun

• a person employed to keep watch for some anticipated event
• 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
• a form of military punishment used by the British in the late 17th century in which a soldier was forced to stand on one foot on a pointed stake
• A stake driven into the ground.
• 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.
• 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.
• A sentry.
• A protester positioned outside an office, workplace etc. during a strike (usually in plural); also the protest itself.
• The card game piquet.

Verb

• serve as pickets or post pickets
  • "picket a business to protest the layoffs"
• fasten with a picket
  • "picket the goat"
• To protest, organized by a labour union, typically in front of the location of employment.
• To enclose or fortify with pickets or pointed stakes.
• To tether to, or as if to, a picket.
• To guard, as a camp or road, by an outlying picket.
• To torture by forcing to stand with one foot on a pointed stake.

Synonyms

lookout, lookout man, pale, piquet, scout, sentinel, sentry, spotter, watch