| \CHER-ee-pik\ | verb
1. Informal. to select with great care: You can cherry-pick your own stereo components.
2. Informal. (in retail use) to buy only the sale items and ignore the other merchandise. | | Quotes | It’s easy to cherry-pick silly or ill-considered or factually flawed things he’s said.
-- Hendrick Hertzberg, "Foul Tip," The New Yorker, Jan. 16, 2009 | | Origin | | Cherry-pick entered English in the 1960s possibly as an extension of the slang term cherry-picker, defined by Railroad Magazine in 1940 as a "switchman, so called because of red lights on switch stands. Also any railroad man who is always figuring on the best jobs and sidestepping undesirable ones." | |
