pitchfork

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pitchfork

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From Middle English pichfork, pycchefork, pychforke, pikeforke, pikkforke, pic-forcke, equivalent to pitch +‎ fork.

• IPA^(key): /ˈpɪt͡ʃˌfɔɹk/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

pitchfork (plural pitchforks)

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

     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.

3. (casual, loosely) Any fork used for farm labor, even a digging fork (but such usage is often considered ignorant by experienced farmers).
4. (rare) A tuning fork.
   • 1988, Tony Trischka, Pete Wernick, Masters of the 5-String Banjo: In Their Own Words and Music, page 400:

     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 […]

• digging fork

• pitchforkful
• rain pitchforks

pitchfork (third-person singular simple present pitchforks, present participle pitchforking, simple past and past participle pitchforked)

1. (transitive) To toss or carry with a pitchfork.

   The hay was soon pitchforked onto the wagon.

2. (transitive, figurative) To throw suddenly.
   • 1925, Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons, The Parliamentary Debates, Official Report:

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

• Category:pitchfork on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons