Peer

How to spell peer

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce peer

What does peer mean?

1. nounA person of the same age, status, or ability as another.
2. verbTo look intently or with difficulty, as if trying to see something unclear.
3. nounA member of the nobility, such as a duke, earl, or baron, especially one entitled to sit in the House of Lords.

Peer in a sentence

• noun

  Academic papers are checked by a peer before publication.

• verb

  She had to peer at the tiny print on the medicine label.

• noun

  The bill was debated by every peer in the upper chamber.

• noun

  Teenagers often feel pressure from every peer in their group.

• verb

  He leaned forward to peer through the foggy windscreen.

• noun

  On inheriting the title he became a peer of the realm.

Where does peer come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This single spelling actually covers two unrelated words. The 'equal' sense comes from the Latin par, meaning 'equal', which passed into Old French as 'per' or 'peer' and entered English in the 1200s; a peer was originally someone of the same rank, and the noble sense (a lord, a member of the peerage) grew because such great men were notionally equals of one another in the king's council. The verb 'to peer', meaning to look searchingly, is much murkier in origin: it surfaced in the 1500s and may be a shortened form of 'appear', or it may be related to a Low German or Flemish word for peeping. Because both words ended up pronounced and spelled identically, English now has a busy little homophone. The most useful thing for spelling is that all of these meanings share the trap of sounding exactly like 'pier', the seaside structure, which comes from an entirely different Medieval Latin root, pera, for a stone support. Keeping 'peer' (equal, or to gaze) apart from 'pier' (a jetty) is the practical challenge.

How the word is built

• peer (from Latin par: equal) for the 'equal' senses; the verb 'to look' is a separate word of obscure origin with no internal parts

Words that sound like peer

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• pier: A long platform built out from the shore over water, used for landing boats or for walking and leisure.