picador
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of picador
1790–1800; < Spanish: literally, pricker, equivalent to pic ( ar ) to prick ( see pique 1) + -ador < Latin -ātor -ator
Explanation
A picador is a bullfighter with a particular job: to jab the bull with a sharp spear, in order to get him angry and riled up. You are only likely to come across the word picador in the context of bullfighting. There are usually two picadors on horseback who poke the bull with lances called picas to get him really mad before his confrontation with the matador, who is the main bullfighter. In Spanish, picador means "pricker" or "piercer," from picar, "to pierce."
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:
He meant he wanted to be a picador with the house’s heritage rather than just aiming for the heart of the nouveau riche.
From New York Times ● Sep. 29, 2011
Shuttling between the two, La Punta bulls develop the sure-footed power that has enabled them at times to throw a picador and his horse five feet up and over the arena's barrier.
From Time Magazine Archive
Even in a tienta, young bulls are allowed to make no more than three or four charges at the picador.
From Time Magazine Archive
Unamuno places guilt as deftly as a picador against whose fearful horse's flank the blundering bull of social judgment charges.
From Time Magazine Archive
Out on the plateau beyond the town employees of the bull-ring exercised picador horses, galloping them stiff-legged on the hard, sun-baked fields behind the bull-ring.
From "The Sun Also Rises" by Ernest Hemingway
These refuges were little used, however, except by the underlings, the capadores, or by capsized picadores; espadas and banderilleros disdained them.
From The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier by Bronson, Edgar Beecher
The picadores looked on aghast; the bull was roaming loose in the ring, perhaps the only indifferent spectator.
From Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, Vol. I. by Stephens, John L.
Rather than stand the assaults of these little picadores, much longer, I believe my crew would have run the gantlet of the whole Federal Navy.
From Memoirs of Service Afloat, During the War Between the States by Semmes, Raphael
One bull persistently refused to attack the picadores.
From The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 10 Prince Otto Von Bismarck, Count Helmuth Von Moltke, Ferdinand Lassalle by Francke, Kuno
The actors in the bull-fights are of four classes: matadores, banderilleros, picadores, and chulos, their relative importance being in the order named.
From With the World's Great Travellers, Volume 3 by Various
He leads his crew not of banderilleros and picadors, but of drink crafters and cooks through flawless passes to a demanding mob, his “domination of the bull.”
From Salon ● Nov. 8, 2025
There are many matadors, picadors, minotaurs, bulls and horses in a new show exploring Picasso and the importance of bullfighting – but also a glimpse of his terrible treatment of women.
From The Guardian ● Apr. 26, 2017
The bullring sequences get along without picadors or coups de grace, and apparently the same old company bull is photographed again & again.
From Time Magazine Archive
Later, while dismounted picadors are getting over the fence, the capaderos engage the bull's attention until the coming of the banderilleros.
From Time Magazine Archive
Back of them were their people, and behind the banderilleros, back in the passageway and in the open space of the corral, I saw the picadors.
From "The Sun Also Rises" by Ernest Hemingway
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.
