Definition of "picket" []

• A pointed stake often driven into the ground to support a fence, secure a tent, tether animals, mark points in surveying, or, when pointed at the top, serve as a defense. (noun)
• A detachment of one or more troops, ships, or aircraft held in readiness or advanced to warn of an enemy's approach: "The outlying sonar picket.... was to detect, localize, and engage any submarine trying to close the convoy” ( Tom Clancy). (noun)
• A person or group of persons stationed outside a place of employment, usually during a strike, to express grievance or protest and discourage entry by nonstriking employees or customers. (noun)
• A person or group of persons present outside a building to protest. (noun)
• To enclose, secure, tether, mark out, or fortify with pickets. (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "That's right, that's what they call a picket line."
• "If the picket is 6 "wide you get a 6" space. smokesilver"
• "Even if they do — the way, for instance, picket, as in "picket fence," and piqué, "a stiff fabric with a raised pattern," do — that hardly implies that nowadays they're synonyms."