The Word "Pick."
—Presuming that the proposal at Vol. v., p. 173., involves the discussion and illustration of the words inserted, allow me, as a Lancashire man, to express my belief that the word pick has invariably the sense of "to throw," and not "to push." It is in fact another form of the verb "to pitch;" the two terminations being almost convertible, especially in words formed from the Saxon, as "fetch" from "feccean," "stitch" from "stician," "thatch" from "theccan," the earlier form of the latter word being retained in the well-known lines of "Bessy Bell and Mary Gray." Pick, in the sense of "throw," will be found in Shakspeare's Henry VIII., Act V. Sc. 3.:
"I'll pick you o'er the pales."
And in Coriolanus, Act I. Sc. 1.:
"As high as I could pick my lance."
And see the notes of the various commentators on these passages. If the subject be worth further illustration, I may mention that in the district of the cotton manufacture, the instrument by which the shuttle is thrown across the loom is called a picker; and each thread of the woven fabric, being the result of one throw of the shuttle, is, by using the word in a secondary sense, called a pick. I have heard a story of a worthy patron of the Arts, more noted for his wealth than his taste, who, attributing certain freedom of touch in a picture, for which he had given a commission, to a want of due pains in elaboration, expressed his dissatisfaction by saying, "there were not the right number of picks to the inch;" the threads of calico, when received from the weaver, being usually counted under the microscope as a test of the goodness of the work.
J. F. M.
North Lincolnshire Provincialisms (Vol. v., pp. 173. 250.).
—I have noted the following North Lincolnshire provincialisms since the appearance of MR. RAWLINSON'S suggestion:—
Beat. A bundle of flax.