wicket

Noun

wicket (plural wickets)

1. A small door or gate, especially one beside a larger one.
   • ...and one, a cool, bold fellow, whom I know well, will unlock the town gate, and—for he has various talents—hopes, through his influence with a pretty daughter of one of the wardens, to leave unbarred a certain wicket in the postern on the seaward side.1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter IV, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 25
   • He then pushed on at full speed, and at last got into the village; and just as they were on the point of catching hold of the horse, he sprung in through the farmer's gate, and the man slapt the wicket after him.1828, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, volume I, London: William Harrison Ainsworth, page 182
2. A small window or other opening, sometimes fitted with a grating.
   • As he did so he heard the shuffle of footsteps entering the chapel and the clicking of the confessional wicket.1978, Lawrence Durrell, Livia, Faber & Faber 1992 (Avignon Quintet), p. 386
3. (Canada, UK) A service window, as in a bank or train station, where a customer conducts transactions with a teller
   • Watt climbed the stone steps and stood before the wicket, looking through its bars. He admired the permanent way, stretching away on either hand, in the moonlight, and the starlight, as far as the eye could reach, as far as Watt's eye could have reached, if it had been inside the station.1953, Samuel Beckett, Watt, [Paris]: Olympia Press, →OCLC
4. a ticket barrier at a rail station, box office at a cinema, etc.
5. One of the two wooden structures at each end of the pitch, consisting of three vertical stumps and two bails; the target for the bowler, defended by the batsman.
   • The umpire placed the wickets 10 minutes before the match started.
6. A dismissal; the act of a batsman getting out.
   • He kept on taking wickets and bowled the opponents team out for 84.
7. The job of a wicketkeeper while the team is bowling.
   • He kept the wicket.
8. The period during which two batsmen bat together.
9. The pitch.
10. The area around the stumps where the batsmen stand.
    • The captain told his fast bowler to bowl around the wicket.
11. (croquet) Any of the small arches through which the balls are driven.
12. A temporary metal attachment that one attaches one's lift-ticket to.