How to Use unpick in a Sentence

unpick

verb
Definition of unpicknext
  • Take off your clothes, your flesh. . . . unpick the lock of your bones.
    — Cressida Leyshon, The New Yorker, 17 May 2021
  • The Belgium winger unpicked West Brom for the opener in the 25th minute.
    — USA TODAY, 12 Feb. 2018
  • Then trace the seam that runs around the baseball in your mind’s eye; imagine unpicking the seam and taking off the cover.
    — Nick Chater, WSJ, 10 Aug. 2018
  • The camera presents their evidence as fact, forcing the audience to unpick the truth from the lies and deceit.
    — CNN, 5 Nov. 2021
  • Her example reminds me of Alexander the Great, slicing through the knot with a sword instead of messing about trying to unpick it.
    — Steff Yotka, Vogue, 5 Dec. 2018
  • Naturally, many hours are spent unpicking what is working and what’s not.
    — Heikki Väänänen, Forbes, 7 Mar. 2023
  • The 11-year-old also had obsessive compulsive disorder and would tear apart her shirts, unpicking all the seams.
    — Catie Monteiro, NBC News, 14 Sep. 2017
  • What’s the easiest way to carry on the conversation without having to unpick every aspect of my dating life for the past six years?
    — Mallory Ortberg, Slate Magazine, 3 Apr. 2017
  • Since the 1940s, scientists have been unpicking the mysteries of this vertical migration and the creatures taking part in it.
    — WIRED, 9 Dec. 2023
  • London has become so closely tied to this continental union that unpicking these will be a complex process.
    — Alexander Smith, NBC News, 28 Oct. 2019
  • That’s partly because the effects of chemical and material tweaks can often be too complex to unpick.
    — The Physics Arxiv Blog, Discover Magazine, 17 May 2022
  • To unpick a nuclear device, engineers need to know the exact sequence in which the pieces were originally put together.
    — Benjamin Plackett, Discover Magazine, 8 Feb. 2019
  • Tactical discipline was key to the second period, as both managers aimed to tighten up at the back and use their nouse and creative players to unpick the opposing defensive locks.
    — SI.com, 30 Oct. 2019
  • Deals come undone The investment firm that agreed to buy Victoria’s Secret in February wants to back out, the highest-profile example to date of a buyer trying to unpick a deal because of the pandemic.
    — New York Times, 23 Apr. 2020
  • After charging ahead for weeks with a deeply contentious judicial overhaul that has unpicked the seams of Israeli society, Mr. Netanyahu sought to find another escape hatch.
    — Patrick Kingsley, New York Times, 27 Mar. 2023
  • Legions of academics, not to mention government officials and researchers in think-tanks, are devoted to unpicking these problems.
    — The Economist, 28 Nov. 2019
  • What Matter’s to Today’s Consumer’ helps unpick changes in consumer behaviour, and understand what might be temporary or more permanent shifts.
    — Catherine Erdly, Forbes, 27 Jan. 2022
  • The result is a cocaine market so saturated that prices have crashed and unpicked coca leaves are rotting in the fields, according to [defense minister] Luis Carlos Villegas.
    — James Hohmann, Washington Post, 9 May 2017
  • For example, should an employee add value to a team with good nature, caring, or for being the person who spends hours unpicking small mistakes in process to streamline the sales process, are these acts of service recorded accurately?
    — Nancy Doyle, Forbes, 7 May 2023
  • That’s a question that Copson, a 30-year-old visual artist who typically trades in freaky and fantastical projections and laser installations, is attempting to unpick via Last Days.
    — Liam Hess, Vogue, 7 Oct. 2022
  • Nearly half of them are now living in makeshift settlements on the outskirts of Goma, relying on precarious humanitarian aid for survival as their crops rot, unpicked in their fields at home.
    — Ryan Lenora Brown, The Christian Science Monitor, 14 Mar. 2023
  • Messi's masterful ability to unpick a defence through an eye-of-the-needle pass and conjure up a goal-scoring opportunity out of seemingly nothing will be relied on by the Catalan outfit.
    — SI.com, 16 Feb. 2018
  • Argentina, for just about as long as can be remembered, has spent major tournaments toiling away against deep-lying opposition, waiting always for Lionel Messi to produce a moment of genius to unpick the defense.
    — Jonathan Wilson, SI.com, 16 June 2018
  • There are four fundamental problems that must be carefully unpicked in order to prevent standardization from undermining progress diversity and inclusion and five checks advised for those making procurement decisions.
    — Nancy Doyle, Forbes, 7 May 2023
  • That inauthenticity combines human agency and technological amplification in a way that is often impossible to unpick.
    — Hari Kunzru, The New York Review of Books, 5 Nov. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'unpick.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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