pitchfork

plural pitchforks

1. An agricultural hand tool comprising a fork with sparse, light tines, attached to a long handle, used for pitching hay (especially loose hay) high up onto a stack (as on a wagon or haystack, or into a haymow).
2. A similar fork with slightly more and heavier tines, used for mucking stalls and pitching soiled bedding into a wagon or manure spreader.

   After my second illness, being too old for “piggy-back rides”, I generally sat in 'Resting Nuke' on a seat naturally formed in a low branch of a cedar, watching relatives down in the bay with pitchforks furiously digging out long black slithery "cockworms" from the muddy sands of Sinky Bay.

   1979, Nellie Eileen Musson, Mind the Onion Seed: Black "roots" Bermuda: Presented During Bermuda's First Heritage Week, May, 1979

   Synonyms: dungfork, manure fork, graip

3. broadlyinformalAny fork used for farm labor, even a digging fork (but such usage is often considered ignorant by experienced farmers).
4. figurativelyin pluralmetonymicallyAn angry mob; the power or effects of such a mob.

   The city council was facing the pitchforks once the public had realized what the new ordinance entailed.

5. rareA tuning fork.

   I went around with a pitchfork [tuning fork] in my pocket, and I'd hit it whenever I thought of it, and I developed perfect pitch […]

   1988, Tony Trischka, Pete Wernick, Masters of the 5-String Banjo: In Their Own Words and Music, page 400

present singular third person pitchforks · participle present pitchforking · participle past pitchforked · past pitchforked

1. transitiveTo toss or carry with a pitchfork.

   The hay was soon pitchforked onto the wagon.

2. figurativelytransitiveTo throw suddenly.

   We have taken an age-old country, and we have suddenly, in 30 years, pitchforked it into the middle of the factory system.

   1925, Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons, The Parliamentary Debates, Official Report

   Synonyms: hurl, pitch

plural Pitchforks

1. A surname.