pitchforks

Noun

pitchfork (plural pitchforks)

1. An agricultural hand tool comprising a fork with sparse, light tines, attached to a long handle, used for pitching hay (especially loose hay) high up onto a stack (as on a wagon or haystack, or into a haymow).
2. A similar fork with slightly more and heavier tines, used for mucking stalls and pitching soiled bedding into a wagon or manure spreader.
   • After my second illness, being too old for “piggy-back rides”, I generally sat in 'Resting Nuke' on a seat naturally formed in a low branch of a cedar, watching relatives down in the bay with pitchforks furiously digging out long black slithery "cockworms" from the muddy sands of Sinky Bay.1979, Nellie Eileen Musson, Mind the Onion Seed: Black "roots" Bermuda: Presented During Bermuda's First Heritage Week, May, 1979

   Synonyms:

   dungfork, manure fork, graip

3. (broadly, informal) Any fork used for farm labor, even a digging fork (but such usage is often considered ignorant by experienced farmers).
4. (figuratively, in plural, metonymically) An angry mob; the power or effects of such a mob.
   • The city council was facing the pitchforks once the public had realized what the new ordinance entailed.
5. (rare) A tuning fork.
   • I went around with a pitchfork [tuning fork] in my pocket, and I'd hit it whenever I thought of it, and I developed perfect pitch […]1988, Tony Trischka, Pete Wernick, Masters of the 5-String Banjo: In Their Own Words and Music, page 400

See all 8 meanings of pitchfork