Picking and plucking

It is almost the end of fig season both the brown and green varities. I love figs almost to the level of my love of chocolate. I ate my first one when I was at a ghost village in the wilds of the Pyrenees. There was a fig tree just outside one of the ruins and a friend plucked a fig from the tree and handed it to me. If my tastebuds could have done cartwheels, they would have and the bees sang the Hallelujah chorus as they buzzed around.

Grapes are now being picked in the nearby vineyards and are appearing at the green grocers. Not as good but along with walnuts from Grenoble, they provide mini fall feasts. I wanted a photo of the fruit coming and going, but after taking it I thought about picking and plucking and the difference in the words.

Some how plucking always seemed more exotic to me…you might pluck a luscious fruit while picking seemed more like a chore. I headed for the dictionary.

PLUCK
Middle English, from Old English pluccian; akin to Middle High German pflücken to pluck before 12th century
1. to pull or pick off or out
2. to remove something (as hairs) from by or as if by plucking one's eyebrows (now that is not exotic and as my eyes get worse involves magnifying mirrors and bright lights)
3. rob , fleece (hmmm, not pretty at all)
4. to move, remove, or separate forcibly or abruptly plucked the child from the middle of the street
5. to pick, pull, or grasp at (okay pick and pluck can be changeable, but the gentle act of reaching up to a fruit in a tree and twisting it off to plunk, yes I did say PLUNK it in your mouth, doesn’t seem grasping unless we add other descriptions to the act.)
6. to play by sounding the strings with the fingers or a pick, the noun. Put you can pick a guitar with a pick but you can’t pick a guitar with a pluck.

Still I like the idea of plucking an apple, fig or plum off a tree, or even plucking a fig from the baskets at the green grocer, a choice to be followed by a lovely experience of eating the chosen item.

PICK
Middle English piken, partly from Old English *pīcian (akin to Middle Dutch picken to prick); partly from Middle French piquer to prick 14th century
1. to pierce, penetrate, or break up with a pointed instrument, picked the hard clay
2. to remove bit by bit as pick meat from bones (not there’s something nice about having had a chicken dinner and sitting at the table and picking a bit of skin or meat, one last yummy taste while chatting and waiting for the coffee to perk)
3. to remove covering or adhering matter from
4. to gather by plucking as in pick apples (AHA So, I can pick a fig to pluck near a chicken who can cluck and maybe duck to miss the bough as I and we won’t use a rhyme that starts with F...but I pluck feathers from that clucking chicken )
5. choose, select (I would say, I pick that dress or I pick this route as shorter, but I couldn’t say I pluck that dress rather than the other one but when I pick it I can pluck it from the hanger.)
6. pilfer, rob (Now I can pick what I pick)
7. to obtain useful information from by questioning
8. To provoke, dig into

If I keep on like this, I might have to give up writing because agonizing over which would is best, could get out of control. Then again that could lead to a short story about a person who couldn't talk, because she couldn't decide which word to say first...