to pick up
125
3.9
- phrasal verb
- /pɪk ʌp/
- Informal
:
detener a
- Several times she got picked up by the city truck and delivered to the pound.
- picked up by police
And she's like, my son has been, has been picked up twice for breaking curfew in two months.
- And she's like, my son has been, has been picked up twice for breaking curfew in two months.
- And right now, you know, they if it felt like the feds built up a case, picked him up, picked up his team.
- I know of one woman that was picked up one night for drink driving and she had crashed into somewhere that the police went to her.
- He's not where he was picked up.
- Neither of those went, but Abbott was the one that I, if Abbott didn't get picked up, I was going to move back home.
- So he gets picked up and suddenly all these people come out of the woodwork and, you know, like he, you know, and it all went through and it was horrible.
Examples
-
The police arrested a drug pusher they picked up in the alley at the top of the steps.
Fiction book (1995) -
During that first frantic week, his brother and father had been picked up by the police and shipped East.
Fiction book (1996) -
So the police will go pick him up, then he'll start his, then his case will start moving.
-
But the police intelligence said no, we need to pick you up and take you to the game and drop you back home.
-
Uh, I was picked up by the cops a couple days later.
-
Police will pick you up.
-
We'll pick up some suspects.
-
You're here to pick up a prisoner, right?
-
More than one hundred men died in the attack; survivors were picked up by the British cruiser Arethusa.
Academic text (2009) -
The police decided to pick up the suspect after receiving an anonymous tip.
Synonyms
∞
1.0
To take hold of a moving person or thing to stop it
∞
3.4
To detain someone and take them to the police station
884
2.8
To catch and take control of someone or something after a chase
130
8.0
To catch someone for a crime, often while they are doing it
118
6.1
To arrest someone and put them in police custody
40
5.8
Catch someone suddenly to stop or arrest them
24
4.6
To grab something quickly, often before someone else
6
6.1
To grab someone by the neck or shirt to stop them
Antonyms
How Restrained
Surface Forms
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 arrest comes from the plain idea of officers taking someone by the arm and carrying them away, as if they 'pick' the person and bring them 'up' to the station. So it means 'to take someone into custody' or 'to arrest'.