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Glite Dictionary
🛒 To collect or buy 🧠 To learn or notice 📦 To lift 📈 To improve 💘 To meet romantically 🚓 To arrest 💳 To pay 🐦 To eat small bits 🎨 To match visually
to pick up

to pick up

126 8.2
To meet someone to start a romantic or sexual relationship
  • phrasal verb
  • /pɪk ʌp/
  • NSFW
translation icon : ligar con
  • What's the best way to pick up a guy without being too obvious?

She went with her girl who went to pick up men, white men.

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Examples

  • Bob says, But I want to say, why don't we go into town and pick up some girls?

  • I'll bet he's headed for a disco right now to pick up a Japanese girl.

    Fiction book (1996)

  • You know that guy who can pick up any girl?

    Thank You for Smoking (2005)

  • Leave it to Pete to pick up a girl at his own baby shower.

    To the New Girl (2020)

  • I'm here to pick up one girl.

    Babylon A.D. (2008)

  • OK, tips for picking up beautiful females?

  • They were trying to pick up girls on the boardwalk.

    Sweet and Lowdown (1999)

  • The Sports Bar is where you go to pick up girls who are not prostitutes.

  • I guess she spends all her free time getting tanked in singles' bars, trying to pick up guys.

Synonyms

to hook up
vsto pick up
  • NSFW
132 8.7

To meet someone for a brief romantic or sexual encounter

meets with the intention to start a romantic or sexual encounter
to chat up
vsto pick up
  • NSFW
4 7.8

Talk to someone in a friendly way to try to start a romantic relationship

aims to meet someone to start a sexual or romantic encounter not just talk

Antonyms

to reject
839 1.9

Refuse to accept someone or something

to turn down
312 2.9

Refuse an offer, invitation, or request

How Direct

to put the moves on
  • NSFW
10 8.6
to hit on
  • NSFW
154 7.8
to pick up
  • NSFW
126 8.2
to chat up
  • NSFW
4 7.8
to flirt
267 3.1

Surface Forms

pick up infinitive
picked up past
picked up past participle
picking up present participle
picks up third person singular

Morphology

pick + up

The police sense 'to take someone into custody' is a pragmatic extension of the basic, transparent meaning 'pick up' = 'collect/take someone' (pick + up). However, the specific legal sense 'arrest' is a specialised interpretation that is not fully predictable from the parts alone and typically requires contextual or cultural knowledge, so it is only partially transparent to learners.

Etymology

Pick up for meeting someone romantically comes from the image of taking someone away from a place, as if you pick them up and lead them off, often quickly and casually. That's why it means 'to meet someone with the aim of starting a short romantic or sexual relationship'.