cherry picker

• cherrypicker, cherry-picker

cherry picker (plural cherry pickers)

1. A piece of equipment consisting of a large basket at the end of an extensible boom, often mounted on a truck body, and used by workers to reach inaccessible places such as power lines and tall trees.

   Synonyms: boom lift, basket crane, hydraladder, bucket truck

   Near-synonym: man lift

   • 2019 October 18, “Extinction Rebellion: Central London targeted despite ban”, in BBC News‎^[1]:

     Earlier police used a cherry picker to clear protesters perched on a wooden structure built to block the road at Oxford Circus.

   • 2025 September 14, Daniel Boffey, “Racism or celebration? What England’s flag-hoisters are saying – and what others are hearing”, in The Guardian‎^[2], →ISSN:

     Between filling the sandwiches, Nicole Moy and Shazza McCormack collect donations for the flags and pass on quietly offered suggestions by local people, anxious about possible illegality, as to where the flaggers should visit next with their ladders and cherrypickers.

2. A cantilevered tool for installing or removing a vehicle's engine block.

   Synonyms: engine crane, engine hoist

3. (literal) A person or device that harvests cherries, or that aids in the harvesting of cherries.
   • 1947, John Trecartin Ogden, Food Freezing:

     A relatively high proportion of the cost of production of RSP cherries is in the picking. Pickers are paid […] . There is considerable interest in a mechanical cherry picker which is reported to be able to double each picker's output.

   • 1994, The World Book Encyclopedia:

     A mechanical cherry picker shakes a cherry tree to loosen the fruit. The cherries drop onto outstretched cloths, roll onto a conveyor, and are deposited in a tank of salt water. The fruit floats in the water and thus is […]

4. (figurative) A person or group that picks the best for themselves; one who cherry-picks.

   Synonym: (sports, UK) goalhanger

5. (figurative) A person or group that picks only evidence which supports an argument and ignores evidence which contradicts it; one who cherry-picks.
   • 2006, Manfred Weidhorn, An Anatomy of Skepticism, →ISBN, page 218:

     Two conclusions stand out: The Bible is a cherry-picker's paradise, and human beings cannot function without double standards.

A cherry picker (sense 1) is differentiated from a manlift in that a cherry picker is always mounted on a truck or other vehicle, and it can reach much higher. The manlift is usually mounted on a piece of small equipment and the cage or bucket is much closer to the ground.

• cherry-pick
• teleporter
• manlift (definition 2)