Word.ws English Dictionary

picking away at

picking away at is the present participle and gerund of pick away at.

Meaning of pick away at

Verb

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

  1. To continually or inexorably harm someone; to continue to do harm; to needle over time; to weaken someone over time.

Questions about picking away at

What is picking away at the present participle and gerund of?
Picking away at is the present participle and gerund of pick away at.

Words near picking away at in the dictionary

  1. picking and choosing
  2. picking and grinning
  3. picking and passing
  4. picking apart
  5. picking at
  6. picking away at
  7. picking bids off the wall
  8. picking by SKU
  9. picking corners
  10. picking fault
  11. picking fights

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: picking away at (page history and authors); pick away at (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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Cite this entry: “picking away at.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/picking_away_at. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.