pickax
Americannoun
-
pickaxes
plural
verb (used with object)
verb (used without object)
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of pickax
1275–1325; pick 2 + ax; replacing Middle English picois < Middle French, Old French; akin to French pic pick 2. See pique 1
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Don’t laugh: The labor secretary’s own lawyers, when pressed at oral argument, couldn’t rule out that a pickax used for mining remains a “mine” even when transported 5,000 miles from any extraction site.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 29, 2026
Black also shows off his prop pickax and runs across the theater hyping up fans before the showing starts.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 14, 2025
Johnson's rumpled delivery extends the mileage of what becomes an extended joke that stops being funny after a point, which is Doug's knack for sniffing out goldmines but just missing the X with his pickax.
From Salon ● Jul. 21, 2023
As the sun began to set Monday, Kris Pflugh of Chewack Wildfire was using a pickax to pull up hot ash and dirt, exposing orange embers.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 19, 2022
I was given my own carbide light, my own pickax, and my own place to work.
From "Prisoner B-3087" by Alan Gratz
Rescuers used what tools they could scrounge — shovels, hoes, pickaxes, their bare hands.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 9, 2026
The store offers everything from basic tools to pan for gold in the river, such as pickaxes and scoops, to pinpointers and high-tech metal detectors that can cost thousands of dollars.
From Barron's ● Nov. 2, 2025
In one photo, several men wield pickaxes as they prepare to bust through sheets of fallen concrete.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 10, 2023
People were said to be arriving with shovels and pickaxes to try to move the debris.
From BBC ● Oct. 1, 2023
They went at the hardened zoquete with pickaxes, hatchets, even acetylene torches.
From "The Milagro Beanfield War" by John Nichols
Then it happened — Harrington, wreathed in Druidic smoke, hoisted his guitar above his head and pickaxed his instrument into the guts of the 12-foot mirror, shattering it into oblivion.
From Washington Post ● Jul. 22, 2021
I asked him if it was true that he'd pickaxed his own furniture to get revellers out of his home.
From The Guardian ● Jan. 20, 2013
Day and night they chipped and hacked, pickaxed and burrowed deeper, uncovering whitened bones by the ton while the deranged clergyman rambled about, frothing like a lunatic.
From "The Milagro Beanfield War" by John Nichols
After the single shot of the big rifle was fired, he had only a knife and a hatchet and the spiked and pickaxed ice-staff, and Brave.
From The Keeper by H. Beam Piper
In the field the previous spring he had accompanied the expedition beyond the "Big Lead" to 84° 29', and with the strength of his broad shoulders he had pickaxed the way.
From A Negro Explorer at the North Pole by Booker T. Washington
The Esquire Network is not exactly pickaxing into virgin ground as it debuts a travel show, a cooking show, a style show, and a show about real estate.
From Slate ● Sep. 23, 2013
No, they were all at work," said the other, "but they were pickaxing the rock in a listless sort of way that I recognized at once.
From The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers by Francis Rolt-Wheeler
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
