Link Centre Dictionary

peck

UK/pɛk/ US/ˈpɛk/ fairly common slang uk
verb (5) noun (3)

verb

1.

hit lightly with a picking motion

Synonyms
2.

eat by pecking at, like a bird

Synonyms
3.

kiss lightly

Synonyms
4.

eat like a bird

  • “The anorexic girl just picks at her food”
Synonyms
5.

bother persistently with trivial complaints

  • “She nags her husband all day long”
Synonyms

noun

1.

(often followed by `of'') a large number or amount or extent

  • “a batch of letters”
  • “a deal of trouble”
  • “a lot of money”
  • “he made a mint on the stock market”
  • “it must have cost plenty”
Synonyms
2.
3.

a United States dry measure equal to 8 quarts or 537.605 cubic inches

Origin

* 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.

Phrases

  • hunt and peck
  • peck at
  • pecking order

Related words

Word family

Broader terms

Narrower terms

Parts

Part of

WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.