peek

See also: Peek, PEEK, and peek’

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: pēk, IPA^(key): /piːk/

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• Homophones: peak, peke, pique
• Rhymes: -iːk

Alternative forms

• peak, peke (obsolete)

Etymology 1

From Middle English *peken, piken, pyken (“to peep”), probably a fusion of Middle English pepen (“to peep”) and keken, kiken (“to keek, look, spy”), equivalent to a blend of peep +‎ keek.

Verb

peek (third-person singular simple present peeks, present participle peeking, simple past and past participle peeked)

1. (informal) To look slyly, or with the eyes half closed, or through a crevice; to peep.
2. (informal) To be only slightly, partially visible, as if peering out from a hiding place.
   • 2012, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Going Down: Oral Sex Stories, →ISBN:

     A pale strip of white skin peeked out from under his waistband.

   • 2012, Michelle Monkou, If I Had You, →ISBN:

     Her brown skin peeked through the empty gap in her clothing.

3. (computing, transitive, dated) To retrieve (a value) from a memory address.

   Coordinate term: poke

   • 2006, Gary Willoughby, PureBasic: A Beginner's Guide to Computer Programming, page 279:

     We are peeking the value from the first index's memory location.

Derived terms

• peekable

Translations

To look slyly, or with the eyes half closed, or through a crevice; to peep

• Afrikaans: loer
• Bulgarian: надничам (bg) (nadničam)
• Cherokee: ᎠᎦᏘᎭ (agatiha)
• Chinese:

  Cantonese: 偷窺／偷窥 (tau¹ kwai¹), 偷睇 (tau¹ tai²), 𥊙 (zong¹)

  Mandarin: 窺視／窥视 (zh) (kuīshì), 偷看 (zh) (tōukàn)

• Dutch: gluren (nl)
• Finnish: kurkistaa (fi)
• French: jeter un coup d’œil (fr)
• German: lugen (de), (colloquial) gucken (de), (colloquial) linsen (de)
• Japanese: 覗く (ja) (のぞく, nozoku)
• Persian: نگاه دزدانه (negâhe dozdâna)
• Portuguese: dar uma espiada, espreitar (pt)
• Romanian: trage cu ochiul, arunca o privire
• Russian: (imperfective) загля́дывать (ru) (zagljádyvatʹ), загляну́ть (ru) (zagljanútʹ), (imperfective) подгля́дывать (ru) (podgljádyvatʹ)
• Spanish: entrever (es)
• Swedish: kika (sv), slänga ett öga, glutta (sv), tjuvkika (sv)
• Turkish: dikizlemek (tr), göz atmak (tr)

To be only slightly, partially visible

• Finnish: pilkottaa, pilkistää (fi)
• Spanish: entreverse (es), atisbarse

computing: To retrieve the value from a memory address

• Finnish: hakea (fi), lukea (fi)
• German: im Speicher nachsehen

Noun

peek (plural peeks)

1. A quick glance or look.

Derived terms

• peek wallet
• sneak peek

Etymology 2

Noun

peek

1. Misspelling of pique.

Anagrams

• Ekpe, Keep, Peke, keep, kepe, peke

Basque

Noun

peek

1. ergative plural of pe

Hlai

Etymology

From Proto-Hlai *pʰaːk (“high”), from Pre-Hlai *paːk (Norquest, 2015).

Pronunciation

• (Standard Hlai, Baoding) IPA^(key): /pʰeːk˥/

Adjective

peek

1. high