▪ I. pickery1
(ˈpɪkərɪ)
Also 6 pikry, pikery, pykery, picory, Sc. pikary, 6–7 pykrie, -ry.
[f. picker1, piker1: see -ery.]
Petty theft. Still a term of Scotch law.
| 1508 in Pitcairn Crim. Trials I. *53 [Convicted of common Theft and] Pikry. 1522 in Boys Sandwich (1792) 683 Prevy picory. 1536 Bellenden Cron. Scot. (1821) II. 107 He conquest his leving on thift and pikary. 1553 in Hakluyt's Voy. (1598) I. 266 For pickerie ducked at yardes arme, and so discharged. 1613–17 in R. M. Fergusson Alex. Hume (1899) 200 For..preventing of the grite stewthe and pykrie that daylie incressis. a 1765 Erskine Princ. Sc. Law (1773) iv. iv. §59 The stealing of trifles, which in our law-language is styled pickery, has never been punished by the usage of Scotland, but with imprisonment, scourging, or other corporal punishment. 1815 Scott Guy M. xlii, A trifle stolen in the street is termed mere pickery. 1861 W. Bell Dict. Law Scot., Pickery, is the stealing of trifles, which has never been punished in any other way than by an arbitrary punishment. |
▪ II. † pickery2
obs. form of peccary.
| 1706 Phillips, Pickery, an American Beast like a Hog. |