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# pickaxe

«pickaxe» in Mova's school dictionary: **a heavy tool with a long wooden handle and a curved metal…** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 2 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

### part of speech

noun (a pickaxe, pickaxes); also pickax (USA)

### meaning for a pupil

A pickaxe is a heavy tool with a long wooden handle and a curved metal head with a point on one or both ends, used for breaking hard ground, rock or ice. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/pickaxe/#m1)

### sense in the lessons

In history lessons miners, gold rush diggers and road builders use pickaxes; in stories and video games a pickaxe is a digging tool. In safety, heavy tools are for adults. Phrases: swing a pickaxe, a miner's pickaxe.

### examples

- The miner swung his pickaxe at the rock. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/pickaxe/#x1)
- Gold rush diggers carried pickaxes and shovels. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/pickaxe/#x2)
- Workers broke up the road with a pickaxe. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/pickaxe/#x3)
- In the game you need a pickaxe to dig for diamonds. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/pickaxe/#x4)
- A pickaxe is too heavy for small children to use. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/pickaxe/#x5)
- The climbers used an ice axe, a kind of small pickaxe. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/pickaxe/#x6)
- Jack took a horn, a shovel, a pickaxe, his armor, and a dark lantern, and one winter’s evening he went to the mount. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/pickaxe/#x7)

### note

Countable: plural «pickaxes». US spelling is often «pickax». Often shortened to «pick». Not the same as an axe, which has a flat blade for chopping wood.

### In the corpora

- [Ruby played right up to bedtime and dreamt all night that she was being chased by a giant pickaxe.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/418-sleep-and-school-mornings/9/)
- [Ruby stops games an hour before bed now, and the giant pickaxe has gone.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/418-sleep-and-school-mornings/17/)

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «pickaxe» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/pickaxe/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.