Word.ws English Dictionary

pick someone's brain

pick someone's brain verb: to seek information from someone knowledgeable; to ask questions of someone.

Verb

pick someone's brain (third-person singular simple present picks someone's brain, present participle picking someone's brain, simple past and past participle picked someone's brain)

  1. (idiomatic) To seek information from someone knowledgeable; to ask questions of someone.
    • After I spent a couple of hours picking his brain, his scheme started to make sense.

Forms of pick someone's brain

third-person singular presentpicks someone's brain
present participlepicking someone's brain
past participlepicked someone's brain
pastpicked someone's brain

Questions about pick someone's brain

What does pick someone's brain mean?
Pick someone's brain means to seek information from someone knowledgeable; to ask questions of someone.
What part of speech is pick someone's brain?
Pick someone's brain is a verb.
What is the past tense of pick someone's brain?
The past tense of pick someone's brain is picked someone's brain.

Words near pick someone's brain in the dictionary

  1. pick sides
  2. pick six
  3. pick sixes
  4. pick slide
  5. pick slides
  6. pick someone's brain
  7. pick someone's brains
  8. pick stitch
  9. pick stitches
  10. pick the right horse
  11. pick the wrong horse

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pick someone's brain (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: En-au-pick someone's brain.ogg.

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