Word.ws English Dictionary

know how to pick 'em

know how to pick 'em verb: you have chosen the wrong person.

Verb

know how to pick 'em (third-person singular simple present knows how to pick 'em, present participle knowing how to pick 'em, simple past knew how to pick 'em, past participle known how to pick 'em)

  1. (colloquial) you have chosen the wrong person
    • But they both turned out to be wrong for me. “Yeah, girl, you sure do know how to pick 'em.”2007, T.N. Baker, Dice, St. Martin's Press, →ISBN, page 137
    • He let out a long slow whistle between his teeth, shaking his head. “Boy, you know how to pick 'em, don't you?”2008, Marcus Wolf, One Lie, Xlibris Corporation, →ISBN, page 413
  2. (colloquial, literally) you are good at picking people or things

Forms of know how to pick 'em

third-person singular presentknows how to pick 'em
present participleknowing how to pick 'em
pastknew how to pick 'em
past participleknown how to pick 'em

Questions about know how to pick 'em

What does know how to pick 'em mean?
Know how to pick 'em means you have chosen the wrong person.
What part of speech is know how to pick 'em?
Know how to pick 'em is a verb.
What is the past tense of know how to pick 'em?
The past tense of know how to pick 'em is knew how to pick 'em.

Words near know how to pick 'em in the dictionary

  1. know everythings
  2. know fine well
  3. know from a bar of soap
  4. know full well
  5. know how many beans make five
  6. know how to pick 'em
  7. know how to walk before one can run
  8. know if one is Arthur or Martha
  9. know inside and out
  10. know inside out
  11. know like a book

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: know how to pick 'em (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-know how to pick 'em.wav.

Cite this entry: “know how to pick 'em.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/know_how_to_pick_%27em. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.