Shirley Ballas

For years Corky was what I call a jokester. He'd tease me with things like, 'You've got breasts like two currants on a breadboard' or 'You've got a sunken chest like a pirate's something or other.' He didn't like my teeth until I got braces at 25. It's like a little pickaxe that goes, chip, chip, chip, until, in the end, you think you are ugly.

English Dancer

Benjamin Percy

Just about every weekend when I was growing up, we would throw rods and rifles and tents and shovels and pickaxes into the back of the truck and then head off to the side of a mountain or the bottom of a canyon. Hiking, fishing, hunting, rock-hounding: this is how my parents passed the time.

American Novelist

The word 'pickaxe' is often used in the context of construction, mining or archaeology.

Tool Context

Using a pickaxe usually implies heavy physical work and breaking things apart.

Physical Effort

A pickaxe can invoke images of gold miners or medieval workers in learners' minds.

Historical Imagery

 And when we dig up nests we find they're about as deep as the colony is wide, so about a meter deep for the big old nests. And then there's another long tunnel and a chamber, where we often find the queen, after eight hours of hacking away at the rock with pickaxes.

Deborah Gordon: The...

 And that’s not counting his backpack, or sarcina, which contains food and all the tools he needs to help build the camp – spade, saw, pickaxe, and basket.

Pickaxe