wicket

/ˈwɪkɪt/

nounB2+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,605 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: wickets

A wicket is the three stumps a bowler aims to knock over. Take a wicket, the wicket fell, keep wicket.

The word does three jobs in cricket: the stumps, the dismissal of a batter and the strip of ground between the two sets of stumps, and only context separates them. It first meant a small door set in a larger one, which it still does outside the game.

Definitions of wicket

1nounwicketThe three stumps a bowler aims to knock over.B2+
“The bowler knocked the bails off the wicket with a fast ball.”

wicket is a target.

Where it comes from

Anglo-Norman wiket means a small door or gate, probably from a Norse word meaning to move or turn.

Proto-Germanic
*wīkwaną — to yield, bend, turn
Old Norse
víkjask — to move oneself, move around
fro-nor
wiket
Middle English
wiket
English, today
wicket

Built from

ýkva · Old Norse — to yield, turn, move, go

From Middle English wiket, from Anglo-Norman - and fro-nor wiket, from Old East Old Norse víkjask (“to move oneself, move around”), reflexive of víkja, víkva, ýkva (“to yield, turn, move, go”), from Proto-Germanic wīkwaną (“to yield, bend, turn”). Compare modern French guichet, ultimately from the same Old Norse - source.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Sports & Games Played

Practise this word

wicket in the wild

Leg before wicket (lbw) is one of the ways in which a batter can be dismissed in the sport of cricket.
Leg before wicket
Leg before wicket first appeared in the laws of cricket in 1774, as batsmen began to use their pads to prevent the ball from hitting their wicket.
Leg before wicket
The wicket-keeper is the only member of the fielding side permitted to wear gloves and external leg guards.
Wicket-keeper
In cricket, the stumps are the three vertical posts that support the bails and form the wicket.
Stump (cricket)
The fielding team's players can hit the wicket with the ball in a number of ways to get a batter out.
Wicket

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

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