winkle-picker

Noun

winkle-picker (plural winkle-pickers)

1. (Ireland, UK) A person who harvests periwinkles (a kind of sea snail) to be eaten.
   • [The girl] informed me that […] I had no right to wander at will upon the winkle-beds! Her brother, said she, was the watcher over this particular part of the Whitstable fishing-ground, beyond which he was the champion winkle-picker of the neighbourhood!1908, W. Percival Westell, chapter 6, in The Story of the Sea and the Seashore, London: Robert Culley, page 199
   • The most inveterate beachcomber and by far the speediest winkle picker in the village was ‘Euan, the son of Euan, the son of Euan’, the Gaelic pronunciation of whose name approximated to a long drawn-out yawn.1961, Lillian Beckwith, “Beachcombing”, in The Sea for Breakfast, London: Arrow Books, published 1968, page 75
2. An implement used to extract the flesh of a periwinkle from its shell.
   • “Anyway, she can’t have got much pleasure out of him. If it’s owt like the rest of him she’d need a winkle-picker to find it.”1982, Pat Barker, chapter 5, in Union Street, New York: Ballantine, published 1983, page 183
   • A few years ago she made the mistake of ordering fruit de mer at a restaurant there. The plate was covered five deep in shellfish. The dastardly waiter had maliciously omitted to supply a winkle-picker.1994, Alan Biggins, chapter 8, in A Normandy Tapestry, Milton Keynes: Kirkdale Books, page 93

   Synonyms:

   winkle pin

3. (also, attributive) A style of boot or shoe with a severely pointed toe, fashionable in the 1950s and 1960s.
   • winkle-picker toes; winkle-picker stilettos
   • Four children on the roundabout […] and two youths with heavy side-burns and stiff crew cuts, in black sweaters, drain-pipe jeans and winkle-pickers, made up the entire custom of the afternoon.1963, H. E. Bates, chapter 6, in Oh! To Be in England, Penguin, published 1966, page 74

   Synonyms:

   roach stomper