different between shepherd vs picket

English

Etymology

From Middle English schepherde, from Old English s??aphierde, a compound of s??ap (“sheep”) and hierde (“herdsman”), equivalent to modern sheep +? herd (“herder”).

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /???p?d/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /???p?d/
• Hyphenation: shep?herd

Noun

shepherd (plural shepherds, feminine shepherdess)

1. A person who tends sheep, especially a grazing flock.

   • It was April 22, 1831, and a young man was walking down Whitehall in the direction of Parliament Street. He wore shepherd's plaid trousers and the swallow-tail coat of the day, with a figured muslin cravat wound about his wide-spread collar.

2. (figuratively) Someone who watches over, looks after, or guides somebody.
   • 1769, Oxford Standard text, Bible (King James), Psalms 23:1

     The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

3. (figuratively) The pastor of a church; one who guides others in religion.
4. (poetic) A swain; a rustic male lover.

Synonyms

• (one who tends sheep): pastor (now rare), sheepherder

Coordinate terms

• shepherdess

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

Verb

shepherd (third-person singular simple present shepherds, present participle shepherding, simple past and past participle shepherded)

1. (transitive) To watch over; to guide.
2. (transitive, Australian rules football) To obstruct an opponent from getting to the ball, either when a teammate has it or is going for it, or if the ball is about to bounce through the goal or out of bounds.

Translations

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