pick someone's brain
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
To ask someone for ideas or advice
Literally: extract information from someone's mind
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Yeah, cos I think Ann's been two courses now and we've picked her brains so we can have basic use, but er you start to realise it's only a little bit of the system you know, you could do a lot more
It is a helpful behaviour to use whenever you need to pick someone else's brains.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “pick someone's brain” mean?
To ask someone for ideas or advice Literally: extract information from someone's mind
Is “pick someone's brain” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.