winkle-picker

plural winkle-pickers · alternative winklepicker · alternative winkle picker

1. IrelandUKA person who harvests periwinkles (a kind of sea snail) to be eaten.

   Annie-John, the winkle picker, in men’s boots and a man’s overcoat went by with an empty bucket.

   2011, Dermot Healy, chapter 46, in Long Time, No See,, London: Faber and Faber, page 424

   3 more examples

   [The girl] informed me that […] I had no right to wander at will upon the winkle-beds! Her brother, said she, was the watcher over this particular part of the Whitstable fishing-ground, beyond which he was the champion winkle-picker of the neighbourhood!

   1908, W. Percival Westell, chapter 6, in The Story of the Sea and the Seashore, London: Robert Culley, page 199

   The most inveterate beachcomber and by far the speediest winkle picker in the village was ‘Euan, the son of Euan, the son of Euan’, the Gaelic pronunciation of whose name approximated to a long drawn-out yawn.

   1961, Lillian Beckwith, “Beachcombing”, in The Sea for Breakfast, London: Arrow Books, published 1968, page 75

   the first piece of writing he had ever done [was] a starkly rhymed description of his boyhood as a winkle-picker on the Welsh coast

   1967, Richard Condon, chapter 1, in The Ecstasy Business, New York: Dial, page 7

2. An implement used to extract the flesh of a periwinkle from its shell.

   Get yourself a pin or a winkle picker, hoik them out [of their shells], dunk them in the shallot vinegar.

   1995, Richard Stein, chapter 11, in Rick Stein’s Taste of the Sea, London: BBC Books, page 202

   3 more examples

   “Anyway, she can’t have got much pleasure out of him. If it’s owt like the rest of him she’d need a winkle-picker to find it.”

   1982, Pat Barker, chapter 5, in Union Street, New York: Ballantine, published 1983, page 183

   A few years ago she made the mistake of ordering fruit de mer at a restaurant there. The plate was covered five deep in shellfish. The dastardly waiter had maliciously omitted to supply a winkle-picker.

   1994, Alan Biggins, chapter 8, in A Normandy Tapestry, Milton Keynes: Kirkdale Books, page 93

   ’[…] Clever bugger. He’s got us nice and tight in here. It’ll take a winkle-picker to get us out.’

   2010, Garry Kilworth, chapter 12, in Scarlet Sash, Sutton: Severn House, page 129

   Synonyms: winkle pin

3. alsoattributiveA style of boot or shoe with a severely pointed toe, fashionable in the 1950s and 1960s.

   winkle-picker toes; winkle-picker stilettos

   4 more examples

   Four children on the roundabout […] and two youths with heavy side-burns and stiff crew cuts, in black sweaters, drain-pipe jeans and winkle-pickers, made up the entire custom of the afternoon.

   1963, H. E. Bates, chapter 6, in Oh! To Be in England, Penguin, published 1966, page 74

   The “Mods” or “Moderns” wear sharply cut Italian‐style suits and long, pointed “winklepicker” shoes. They ride motor scooters fitted with scores of gleaming accessories.

   1964 March 31, “Rival Teen‐Age Gangs Terrorize British Sea Resort”, in The New York Times

   Summer of 1955, Archie went to Fleet Street with his best winkle-pickers on, looking for work as a war correspondent.

   2000, Zadie Smith, White Teeth, London: Hamish Hamilton, →ISBN, page 12

   Logan had dressed a little differently to the rest. It would be the flourish of a neck scarf maybe. Or a different cut to the boot. If everyone else was wearing a square toecap, nothing would do Logan Hartnett only to arrive into the [Café] Aliados in a winklepicker, and the sly puss on.

   2011, Kevin Barry, City of Bohane, Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, published 2012, Part 2, Chapter 20, pp. 143-144

   Synonyms: roach stomper