Wicket

In the game of cricket, the word "wicket" confusingly refers to three different things. Cricket is a fairly impenetrable game for the uninitiated, and this terminological fluidity doesn't help.

Here are the three meanings for wicket. Note how they have little relationship to each other.

• A synonym for pitch, ie, the 22 yard strip of rolled and flattened turf that is the central feature of any cricket ground.
• A synonym for stumps, ie, the 3 cylindrical wooden sticks topped with two bails that the bowler aims for, and the batter attempts to defend.
• The dismissal of a batter, for example, a bowler is said to have "five wickets" if they have dismissed five batters.

In addition, wicket is sometimes used in a metaphorical sense. See Bat on a sticky wicket.

wicket

A casement ; also a little door.

The 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue.

Wick"et (?), n. [OE. wiket, OF. wiket, guichet, F. quichet; probably of Scand. origin; cf. Icel. vk a small creek, inlet, bay, vik a corner.]

1.

A small gate or door, especially one forming part of, or placed near, a larger door or gate; a narrow opening or entrance cut in or beside a door or gate, or the door which is used to close such entrance or aperture. Piers Plowman.

Milton.

And so went to the high street, . . . and came to the great tower, but the gate and wicket was fast closed. Ld. Berners.

The wicket, often opened, knew the key. Dryden.

2.

A small gate by which the chamber of canal locks is emptied, or by which the amount of water passing to a water wheel is regulated.

3. Cricket (a)

A small framework at which the ball is bowled. It consists of three rods, or stumps, set vertically in the ground, with one or two short rods, called bails, lying horizontally across the top.

The ground on which the wickets are set.

4.

A place of shelter made of the boughs of trees, -- used by lumbermen, etc.

Bartlett.

5. Mining

The space between the pillars, in postand-stall working.

Raymond.

Wicket door, Wicket gate, a small door or gate; a wicket. See def. 1, above. Bunyan. -- Wicket keeper Cricket, the player who stands behind the wicket to catch the balls and endeavor to put the batsman out.

© Webster 1913.