peck

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   To strike or pierce with the beak or bill (of a bird).

   The birds pecked at their food.

2. 2
   verb

   To form by striking with the beak or a pointed instrument.

   To peck a hole in a tree.

3. 3
   verb

   To seize and pick up with the beak, or as if with the beak; to bite; to eat; often with up.

   This fellow pecks up wit as pigeons peas.

4. 4
   verb

   To do something in small, intermittent pieces.

   He has been pecking away at that project for some time now.

Multiword verbs with peck

• peck at Prepositional verb C2

  to eat small amounts of food with little enthusiasm

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Peck is probably a dialectal variant of pick and is therefore related to pike, an old word for a pointed implement. The later expression pecking order translates German Hackordnung, a term for the social hierarchy observed among hens.

* As an English surname, variant of Speake with loss of the initial letter. * Also as an English (and sometimes Irish) surname, variant of Peak, Petch, Peach. * As a south German surname, variant of Beck. Compare Pek, also found in Poland. * As a Dutch and north German surname, from pek (“pitch, tar, resin”). * As a Hungarian, Czech, Polish, Serbo-Croatian and Slovene surname, Americanized and Germanized from Pek, Pék meaning "baker," itself ultimately from the German verb backen.

Topics

External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary