Word.ws English Dictionary

pickoff

pickoff noun: a play in which a pitcher throws a live ball to a fielder so that the fielder can tag out a baserunner who has moved away from the base.

Noun

pickoff (plural pickoffs)

  1. A play in which a pitcher throws a live ball to a fielder so that the fielder can tag out a baserunner who has moved away from the base
    • Zobrist broke for third during Pettitte’s pickoff move, stealing the base when Pettitte threw behind the runner.2007 April 6, Tyler Kepner, “Pettitte’s Return Lost Amid Sloppy Play”, in New York Times
  2. The rescue of a stranded caver from a rope, returning them to the ground.

Forms of pickoff

pluralpickoffs

Origin of pickoff

Deverbal from pick off.

Questions about pickoff

What does pickoff mean?
Pickoff means a play in which a pitcher throws a live ball to a fielder so that the fielder can tag out a baserunner who has moved away from the base.
What part of speech is pickoff?
Pickoff is a noun.
What is the plural of pickoff?
The plural of pickoff is pickoffs.

Words near pickoff in the dictionary

  1. picknicker
  2. picknickers
  3. picknicking
  4. picknicks
  5. pickny
  6. pickoff
  7. pickoffs
  8. Pickover
  9. Pickovers
  10. pickpack
  11. pickpennies

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pickoff (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: “pickoff.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pickoff. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.