picket
noun
[ ˈpɪkɪt ]
• a person or group of people who stand outside a workplace or other venue as a protest or to try to persuade others not to enter during a strike.
• "forty pickets were arrested"
• a soldier or small group of soldiers performing a particular duty, especially one sent out to watch for the enemy.
• "when would this headlong advance run into the enemy pickets?"
• a pointed wooden stake driven into the ground, typically to form a fence or to tether a horse.
• "a cedar-picket stockade"
picket
verb
• act as a picket outside (a workplace or other venue).
• "strikers picketed the newspaper's main building"
Similar:
demonstrate at,
form a picket at,
man the picket line at,
launch a demonstration at,
protest at,
form a protest group at,
blockade,
isolate,
surround,
cordon off,
Origin:
late 17th century (denoting a pointed stake, on which a soldier was required to stand on one foot as a military punishment): from French piquet ‘pointed stake’, from piquer ‘to prick’, from pic ‘pike’.
