Word.ws English Dictionary

pick off

pick off verb: to remove by picking.

Verb

pick off (third-person singular simple present picks off, present participle picking off, simple past and past participle picked off)

  1. (literally) To remove by picking.
    • Before you recycle the bottle you need to pick off the label.
  2. To dispose of tasks, obstacles, opponents etc. precisely, one by one.
    • Let's pick off these issues starting from the top.
    • England's batsmen were nothing more than sitting ducks waiting to be picked off by these unerringly accurate marksmen.
    1. To shoot one by one.
      • The sniper picked off the incoming police one at a time.
  3. To throw out a runner by tagging them whilst they are not in contact with any of the three bases or home plate.
    • The pitcher attempted to pick off the runner at first, but he was safe.
  4. To intercept, such as a ball in flight.
    • But the World Cup winning veteran's left boot was awry again, the attempt sliced horribly wide of the left upright, and the saltires were waving aloft again a moment later when a long pass in the England midfield was picked off to almost offer up a breakaway try.2011 October 1, Tom Fordyce, “Rugby World Cup 2011: England 16-12 Scotland”, in BBC Sport

Noun

pick off (plural pick offs)

  1. An instance of throwing out a batter leading off base.
    • The final out of the game was determined by a pick off.

pick off meaning in Tamil and Marathi

pick off in Tamil

to pick off, as a scab of an ulcer; to pick out, as wax from the ear
நோண்டு nōṇṭu

pick off in Marathi

to pick off
टिपणे ṭipṇe

Forms of pick off

Verb
third-person singular presentpicks off
present participlepicking off
past participlepicked off
pastpicked off
Noun
pluralpick offs

Questions about pick off

What does pick off mean?
Pick off means to remove by picking.
What is pick off in Tamil?
Pick off in Tamil is நோண்டு (nōṇṭu). See Pick off meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is pick off?
Pick off can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of pick off?
The past tense of pick off is picked off.

Words near pick off in the dictionary

  1. pick me
  2. pick mes
  3. pick oakum
  4. pick of the crop
  5. pick of the litter
  6. pick off
  7. pick offs
  8. pick on
  9. pick on someone your own size
  10. pick one's battles
  11. pick one's nose

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pick off (page history and authors); நோண்டு (Tamil) (page history and authors); टिपणे (Marathi) (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-pick off.wav.

Cite this entry: “pick off.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pick_off. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.