Peck

How to spell peck

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce peck

What does peck mean?

1. verbTo strike, pick up, or pierce something with the beak, as a bird does.
2. nounA quick, light kiss.
3. nounA unit of dry volume equal to a quarter of a bushel.

Peck in a sentence

• verb

  The hens peck at the scattered corn every morning.

• noun

  She gave him a quick peck on the cheek before leaving for work.

• noun

  The orchard sold apples by the peck at the autumn market.

• verb

  Sparrows will peck crumbs from the patio table.

• noun

  A fond peck on the forehead settled the child for sleep.

• noun

  A single peck of potatoes filled the wooden basket.

Where does peck come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Peck appears in Middle English as 'pekken' around the 1300s, almost certainly a variant of the verb 'pick', which described a sharp, pointed striking motion. The link is easy to see: a bird picking at grain with the tip of its beak is doing exactly what the word names, and the spelling settled on the short, blunt 'peck' form for the bird's quick jabbing action. From the literal pecking of birds the word stretched naturally to mean a brief, light kiss, the human equivalent of a quick dab. The unit of dry measure called a peck, a quarter of a bushel, comes from a separate medieval source, an Anglo-Norman word 'pek', whose own ancestry is genuinely obscure. Because the everyday word is so plainly built on the 'pick' family, its short vowel and final 'ck' rarely cause adults any trouble.

How the word is built

• peck (Middle English pekken, a variant of 'pick')