winkle-pickers

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
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

   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

   Synonyms:

   roach stomper