🛒 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

∞ 2.6

To learn or notice something often by chance

phrasal verb
/pɪk ʌp/

: aprender

You pick up the signal?
pick up on themes

Implicit learning doesn't care what patterns it picks up, right?

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Examples

Ahead of us, women in shawls and small children are picking up coal along the road.

Academic text (2011)
"The computer lost the lock, but seemed to pick it up again right away.

Fiction book (1991)
Can you pick up their signal?

The Crow (2024)
It's easy to pick up.

The Killer (2024)
I'm in the business of picking up on these things.

Broken City (2013)
We just didn't quite pick up this point yet.
It's your intuition that picks them up and then act on them.

Evan Carmichael
For several minutes, both terrified women strained their ears to pick up the slightest sound.

Fiction book (1991)
The long-range over-the-horizon radars would have picked up the tracks of international missiles long ago.

Fiction book (1991)
While tuning the radio, I was able to pick up a faint signal from a distant station.

Synonyms

to see

vsto pick up

∞ 1.0

To understand what something means

leans more on raw sensing or simple detection than full understanding

to hear

vsto pick up

∞ 1.0

Find out about something often by chance

adds a sensory or equipment aspect rather than just hearing about it

to find out

vsto pick up

∞ 2.1

To learn something you did not know, often by searching or asking

emphasizes casual or sensory detection rather than active effort

to learn

vsto pick up

∞ 1.0

Find out about something often by chance

is similar but includes deliberate sensing as well as chance learning

to discover

vsto pick up

∞ 1.0

To find out about something for the first time, often by chance

is more about noticing or sensing in the moment than formal discovery

to catch

vsto pick up

474 2.1

To notice something quickly with the senses or mind

covers both sudden and slower noticing, not only brief perception

to receive

vsto pick up

Specialized

271 2.2

To take in signals or information

also covers human sensing and chance detection, not just equipment

to pick up on

vsto pick up

142 3.9

To notice something that is not obvious

is broader and often happens by chance or simple sensing

to pick out

vsto pick up

64 3.0

Notice a sound or sight among other things

focuses more generally on learning or detecting, not selection

to take notice

vsto pick up

42 3.5

To see and pay attention to something

is less about focused observation and more about casual detection

to get wind

vsto pick up

31 5.8

Hear about something by chance, not from official sources

is broader, covering sensory detection and equipment as well as hearsay

to sniff out

vsto pick up

Informal

15 4.0

Find something by searching, often by smell

is typically accidental or passive detection rather than active searching

Antonyms

to miss

518 1.7

To not notice or hear something important

to overlook

243 2.9

To not notice someone or something you should see

How Easy

to notice

∞ 1.0

to pick up

∞ 2.6

to learn

∞ 1.0

to master

191 4.1

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 learning or noticing comes from the image of picking small bits and bringing them toward you, like gathering small stones or pieces of information with your hand and mind. So it means 'to learn or notice little things, often by chance'.