pick apart

verb

picked apart; picking apart; picks apart

chiefly US

: to say all of the things that are bad or wrong about (someone or something) : to criticize (a person or thing) in a very detailed and usually unkind way

You can expect political analysts to pick apart the governor's speech.

The film's critics picked his performance apart.

Examples of pick apart in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Scientists trying to uncover how laughter evolved have picked apart animals’ facial expressions, but less work has been done on how laughs sound. — ABC News, 25 June 2026

Familiarity has offered little comfort, with the Scots routinely picked apart by Brazil’s flair and freewheeling attacking style, losing three times and drawing once in those previous meetings. — Conor O'Neill, New York Times, 24 June 2026

Yet its script and staging afforded Spark the space to pick apart Sybil’s nagging question. — Literary Hub, 9 June 2026

The best players on the planet are always going to pick apart a golf course with those factors, which is exactly what unfolded. — Mark Harris Outkick, FOXNews.com, 25 May 2026

Rhymes for pick apart

• counterpart
• art
• cart
• carte
• chart
• dart
• fart
• haart
• mart
• part
• smart
• start