different between picket vs paling

English

Etymology

From French piquet, from piquer (“to pierce”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /?p?k?t/
• Rhymes: -?k?t
• Hyphenation: pick?et

Noun

picket (countable and uncountable, plural pickets)

1. A stake driven into the ground.

2. (historical) A type of punishment by which an offender had to rest his or her entire body weight on the top of a small stake.
3. A tool in mountaineering that is driven into the snow and used as an anchor or to arrest falls.
4. (military) 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.
   • 1990, Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game, Folio Society 2010, p. 59:

     So confident was he that he ignored the warning of his two British advisers to post pickets to watch the river, and even withdrew those they had placed there.

5. (sometimes figuratively) A sentry.
6. A protester positioned outside an office, workplace etc. during a strike (usually in plural); also the protest itself.
7. (card games, uncountable) The card game piquet.

Derived terms

• picket line
• picket pin
• picket rope

Translations

Verb

picket (third-person singular simple present pickets, present participle picketing, simple past and past participle picketed)

1. (intransitive) To protest, organized by a labour union, typically in front of the location of employment.
2. (transitive) To enclose or fortify with pickets or pointed stakes.
3. (transitive) To tether to, or as if to, a picket.

   to picket a horse

4. (transitive) To guard, as a camp or road, by an outlying picket.
5. (obsolete, transitive) To torture by forcing to stand with one foot on a pointed stake.

Derived terms

• picketing (noun)
• unpicketed

German

Pronunciation

Verb

picket

1. second-person plural subjunctive I of picken

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?pe?l??/

Verb

paling

1. present participle of pale

Noun

paling (plural palings)

1. A pointed stick used to make a fence.
   • 1969, Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, New York: Bantam, 1971, Chapter 20, p. 117,^[2]

     The boys continued hitting the tennis ball with pailings snatched from a fence […]

   • 1997, Richard Flanagan, The Sound of One Hand Clapping, New York: Grove Press, 2014, Chapter 6,^[3]

     The smell of the damp eucalypt palings that clad the walls exhaling their aromatic resin into the house, mingling with the fragrance of the myrtle burning in the fireplace.

2. A fence made of palings.
   • 1789, Alderman Le Mesurier^[4], addressing the House of Commons, in The Parliamentary Register,^[5] London: John Debrett, Volume 26, p. 172,^[6]

     Gentlemen must have observed that many of the nurserymen’s plantations were wide and extensive, some of them covering several acres; and that their palings and fences were for the most part low, and might be so weak and out of repair, as to afford a very insufficient security against the inroads of robbers and spoilers.

   • 1813, Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Modern Library Edition (1995), Chapter 12, page 142,^[7]

     The park paling was still the boundary on one side, and she soon passed one of the gates into the ground.

3. (Caribbean) A fence made of galvanized sheeting.
   • 1961, V. S. Naipaul, A House for Mr Biswas, London: André Deutsch, Part One, Chapter 3, p. 118,^[8]

     He worked badly. He had to paint a large sign on a corrugated iron paling. Doing letters on a corrugated surface was bad enough; to paint a cow and a gate, as he had to, was maddening.

Alternative forms

• pailing

Translations

References

Anagrams

• Galpin

Afrikaans

Etymology

From Dutch paling, from Middle Dutch paeldinc, from Old Dutch *pathelink.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?p??.l??/

Noun

paling (plural palinge, diminutive palinkie)

1. eel

Synonyms

• aal

Dutch

Etymology

From Middle Dutch paeldinc, from Old Dutch *pathelink.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?pa?.l??/
• Hyphenation: pa?ling
• Rhymes: -a?l??

Noun

paling m (plural palingen, diminutive palinkje n)

1. eel

Synonyms

• aal

Derived terms

• palingvisser
• palingvisserij

Descendants

• Afrikaans: paling

Malay

Pronunciation

Noun

paling

1. majority

Synonyms

• para

Adjective

paling (Jawi spelling ??????, plural paling-paling)

1. top; greatest, super
2. mainstream

Adverb

paling (Jawi spelling ??????)

1. most, very

Synonyms

• terlalu
• sungguh

Further reading

• “paling” in Pusat Rujukan Persuratan Melayu | Malay Literary Reference Centre, Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 2017.