pickax
Americannoun
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
The carvings depict bighorn sheep, bisected circles and at one site, a miner swinging a pickax.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 11, 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
Her DNA was found on a pickax on Daybell’s property, according to testimony from a forensic investigator.
From Seattle Times ● May 10, 2023
We found a shovel and pickax at an abandoned farm and spent just about every free minute digging a hole.
From "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls
The diggers, armed with pickaxes, arrived almost overnight.
From Barron's ● Feb. 16, 2026
The Californians who got seriously rich in the 1850s didn’t pick up pickaxes; they sold them, along with eggs and boots and soap to the men who did.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 11, 2025
In one photo, several men wield pickaxes as they prepare to bust through sheets of fallen concrete.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 10, 2023
Behind him, 20 men were working with pickaxes, shovels and hands.
From BBC ● Sep. 11, 2023
Miss Whitlaw had managed to salvage shovels, pickaxes, and crowbars from the various places for at least a dozen workers.
From "Dragonwings" by Laurence Yep
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
As my horse about this time began to show signs of fatigue, and as Lawley's pickaxed most alarmingly, we turned them into some clover to graze, whilst we watched two brigades pass along the road.
From Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 by Fremantle, Arthur James Lyon
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 Piper, H. Beam
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 Rolt-Wheeler, Francis
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.
