pick out

verb picks out · picking out · picked out

1. transitive To remove by picking. But lering and lurking here and there like ſpies, / The devil tere their tunges and pike out their ies!
2. transitive To select. Theſe broken fragments, John de Fordun, vvho lived in the fourteenth century, collected vvith a pious induſtry, and from them picked out materials, vvhich he formed into a regular hiſtory.
3. idiomatic, transitive To distinguish; discern. The young birds cry out for food, and the parents returning from the sea manage to pick out their own amid a mass of lookalikes.
4. transitive To ornament or relieve with lines etc. of a different, usually lighter, colour. a dark green carriage body picked out with red
5. idiomatic, transitive To detect using one's senses (sight, smell, hearing, touch, taste). And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock.
6. idiomatic, transitive To send a long pass or cross to. Ameobi skipped away down the left in the 39th minute and tried to pick out Shearer with a cross but his delivery was cut out by goalkeeper Jussi J...
7. transitive To play music slowly, such as when practicing.