🎸 Playing guitar 🎸 To play music 🍓 To gather by hand

pickin'

4 9.9

Playing an instrument like a guitar or banjo by plucking strings

noun
/ˈpɪkɪn/

Informal

: tocar

At the concert, we were treated to some amazing pickin' by the talented banjo player.
cotton-pickin'
Pig Pickin'
Pickin' Fair

Examples

And my flat-pickin' brothers James and Jack have great stories to tell about the many nights they've spent playing in roadhouses filled with rednecks.

Blog text (26)
Excited to play this show and see that banjo-pickin' super crafty gal!

Blog text (2)
And some of the stuff would be finger picking, some of it would be flat picking through the strings.
His pickin' skills on the guitar impressed everyone at the campfire.
She loves listening to bluegrass music, especially when the pickin' is lively and fast-paced.

Synonyms

to pick

vspickin'

179 3.2

To pluck instrument strings with fingers or a small tool

is the informal, dialectal word used for that same string technique

to play guitar

vspickin'

48 2.0

To make music using a guitar

names the informal string-pulling style on that instrument rather than general performance

to strum

vspickin'

6 3.7

To play a string instrument by sweeping fingers or a pick across the strings in a steady rhythm

means using individual string pulls rather than sweeping many strings

to pluck the string

vspickin'

1 3.9

Gently pull and release a string on an instrument like a guitar or harp to make a sound

refers to playing many strings as a musical technique, not one string

Idioms

pickin' and grinnin'

Informal

9.9

People play music and smile together in a happy, relaxed way

How Skillful

pickin'

Informal

4 9.9

to pick

179 3.2

pluck

6.1

Surface Forms

pickin' singular

pickins' plural

Morphology

pickin' = picking (semi-transparent) = pick + ing

The form is a clipped spelling of 'picking', and the noun sense is a somewhat specialized use referring to plucking strings on an instrument.

Etymology

The word pickin' comes from the simple verb pick, which means 'to pluck' or 'take with the fingers'. Think of a 'guitar pick' plucking strings, so pickin' as a noun means the act of plucking or playing a stringed instrument.