What does “piocher” mean in French?
On pioche une couleur dans les M&M pour décider si on adopte un chien
A2 French listening practice · French from France · Curated for beginners
Une pioche is a pickaxe, and piocher is to break ground with one. Everyday French keeps only the digging-in: reaching into a pile and taking something without being able to choose. Pioche une carte, piocher un M&M dans le paquet. In card games la pioche is the draw pile itself — the stack left over once everyone has been dealt their hand.
Faire une bonne pioche is the phrase that grew out of the card table: it means you picked well, and it now covers a good hire, a good restaurant, a lucky choice of anything. Its opposite, mauvaise pioche, is the shrug you give when the thing you picked turns out badly.