0 to take some things and leave others: --
The richest universities can pick and choose which students they take.
He's brilliant at picking winners (= choosing what will be successful).
They picked their way (= carefully chose a route) down the broken steps.
The fairest way to decide the winner is to pick a name out of a hat/at random (= without looking or choosing).
The police asked him if he could pick (out) the killer from a series of photos.
[ + obj + to infinitive ] She was picked to play for the team.
1 to remove separate things or small pieces from something, especially with the fingers: --
They were picking strawberries for twelve hours a day.
disapproving He kept picking his nose (= removing mucus from it with his finger).
[ + obj + adj ] The carcass had been picked clean (= all the flesh had been removed) by other animals and birds.
The child continued picking (at) a sore on his leg (= trying to remove parts of it with his fingers).
2 When you pick a string on a guitar or similar instrument, you pull it quickly and release it suddenly with your fingers to produce a note. --
3 choice: --
4 a pickaxe : --
5 a small, thin piece of plastic, metal, etc. that isheld between the fingers and thumb and usedfor playing instruments such as the guitar --
Consider, for example, the fact that we are all obliged to refrain from picking our respective noses in public places.
It is harder to pick out experts in moral and political matters than it is in medical or musical matters.
In reality, they might of course also pick up cues from opinion leaders or the media in order to form their regime preference.
For example, in repeatedly mobile code, we might want to instantiate each identifier only as needed to always pick up the current local definitions.
We have extended this heuristic so that the nodes that are already without a route are picked first (when they exist).
The mistaken assumption was that the concepts of religion and politics can only be intelligible if they pick out some real essence.
If a solution exists it can be found immediately by picking the ' 'right' ' assignment at each stage.
More recent incongruity theorists have begun to pick up on the sociological importance of this kind of deviation from expectation.
