Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun 1. An instrument for picking or cleaning the teeth; a toothpick.
- noun An umbelliferous plant, Ammi Visnaga, of southern Europe: so called from the use made in Spain of the rays of the main umbel.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun obsolete A toothpick.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun obsolete A
toothpick .
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word picktooth.
Examples
-
As for the meat of this country, I can scarce eat it; and, though we pay two good shillings a head for our dinner, I find it all so tough that I have spent less time with my knife than my picktooth.
-
As for the meat of this country, I can scarce eat it; and, though we pay two good shillings a head for our dinner, I find it all so tough that I have spent less time with my knife than my picktooth.
Oliver Goldsmith Irving, Washington 1849
-
As for the meat of this country, I can scarce eat it; and, though we pay two good shillings a head for our dinner, I find it all so tough that I have spent less time with my knife than my picktooth.
Oliver Goldsmith A Biography Washington Irving 1821
-
And this unhappy fancy fixing itself in his head, as he searched for it everywhere with the lanthorn of desire, it grew in four seconds from a picktooth to a pole, from a crab-apple to an Indian pumpkin, from barber's embers to a glass furnace, and from a dwarf to a giant; insomuch that he thought of nothing else than the image of that object encrusted in his heart as stone to stone.
Pentamerone. English Giambattista Basile 1603
Wordplayer commented on the word picktooth
What a word. It's a compound word that can be flipped and retain the same meaning!
November 12, 2011