• a sports implement (usually consisting of a handle and an oval frame with a tightly interlaced network of strings) used to strike a ball (or shuttlecock) in various games
• A game at cards played between two persons, with thirty-two cards, all the deuces, threes, fours, fives, and sixes, being set aside.
• 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.
• (sometimes figurative) 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
• 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.
Note: This list has been curated by our developer and author and fine-tuned since 2016 with manual additions, exclusions and rankings. Thousands of user contributions from rappers, singers, songwriters and poets have also been used for accuracy.