PECK • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Peck

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/pɛk/ Listen

noun

Peck n.

1.

The fourth part of a bushel; a dry measure of eight quarts; as, a peck of wheat. "A peck of provender."

2.

A great deal; a large or excessive quantity. "A peck of uncertainties and doubts."

Peck n. A quick, sharp stroke, as with the beak of a bird or a pointed instrument.

verb

Peck v. t. (past & past part. pecked; pres. part. pecking)

1.

To strike with the beak; to thrust the beak into; as, a bird pecks a tree.

2.

Hence: To strike, pick, thrust against, or dig into, with a pointed instrument; especially, to strike, pick, etc., with repeated quick movements.

3.

To seize and pick up with the beak, or as with the beak; to bite; to eat; often with up. "This fellow pecks up wit as pigeons peas."

4.

To make, by striking with the beak or a pointed instrument; as, to peck a hole in a tree.

Peck v. i.

1.

To make strokes with the beak, or with a pointed instrument.

2.

To pick up food with the beak; hence, to eat. "(The hen) went pecking by his side."

To peck at,

(a)

to attack with petty and repeated blows; to carp at; to nag; to tease.

(a)

to eat slowly and in small portions, with litle interest; as, to peck at one's food.

See images of 'Peck'

Etymology of 'Peck'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Peck" Quotes from Famous Books

... Peck, of New York, shows that during the year 1891, in about 6,000 manufacturing establishments in that State embraced within the special inquiry made by him, and representing 67 different industries, there was a net increase ...

— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison

... with much panting and tugging, wriggled his plump, round body into the hen-house. He walked over where a lonesome looking hen was sitting patiently on a nest. He put out a cautious hand and the hen promptly gave it a vicious peck. ...

— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun

... he and his brother started a "box factory," on the canal in Grand Rapids. In the winter of 1865-66 he took me over to see it. It was a small affair run by water power. The "boxes" which they manufactured were measures of the old-fashioned kind like the half-bushel and peck measures made of wood fifty years ago. They were of all sizes from a half-bushel down to a quart and used for "dry measure." Before the top rim was added and the bottom put in it was customary to pile the cylindrical shells one on top of another in the shop. Looking at these piles one ...

— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd

... our heroine's thoughts; but with this impression of her old friend's combined impatience and diffidence they began again to whirl round her, and continued it till one of them appeared to dart at her, out of the dance, as if with a sharp peck. It came to her with a lively shock, with a positive sting, that Mr. Drake was—could it be possible? With the idea she found herself afresh on the edge of laughter, of a sudden and strange perversity of mirth. Mr. Drake loomed, in a swift image, before her; such a figure as she ...

— In the Cage • Henry James

... years ago, your lordship, the very day you and Honey-Bee went on that frolic from which neither of you ever returned. My deceased husband went up the mountain to sell a horse. That's the truth. He fed the beast with a good peck of oats soaked in cider to give him a firm leg and a brilliant eye; he took him to market near the mountain. He had no cause to regret his oats or his cider, for he sold his horse for a much better price. Beasts are like human beings; ...

— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France

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