"pick away at" meaning in English

See pick away at in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Forms: picks away at [present, singular, third-person], picking away at [participle, present], picked away at [participle, past], picked away at [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|*}} pick away at (third-person singular simple present picks away at, present participle picking away at, simple past and past participle picked away at)
  1. To continually or inexorably harm someone; to continue to do harm; to needle over time; to weaken someone over time.

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for pick away at meaning in English (1.2kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "picks away at",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "picking away at",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "picked away at",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "picked away at",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "pick away at (third-person singular simple present picks away at, present participle picking away at, simple past and past participle picked away at)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English phrasal verbs with particle (at)",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English phrasal verbs with particle (away)",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To continually or inexorably harm someone; to continue to do harm; to needle over time; to weaken someone over time."
      ],
      "id": "en-pick_away_at-en-verb-gIQTwcsS",
      "links": [
        [
          "continually",
          "continually"
        ],
        [
          "inexorably",
          "inexorably"
        ],
        [
          "needle",
          "needle"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "pick away at"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "picks away at",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "picking away at",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "picked away at",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "picked away at",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "pick away at (third-person singular simple present picks away at, present participle picking away at, simple past and past participle picked away at)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English phrasal verbs",
        "English phrasal verbs with particle (at)",
        "English phrasal verbs with particle (away)",
        "English verbs"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To continually or inexorably harm someone; to continue to do harm; to needle over time; to weaken someone over time."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "continually",
          "continually"
        ],
        [
          "inexorably",
          "inexorably"
        ],
        [
          "needle",
          "needle"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "pick away at"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.