peek

See also: Peek, PEEK, and peek’

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: pēk, IPA^(key): /piːk/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (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. Perhaps also possibly a metathetic alteration of Middle English kepen, kipen, kypen (“to keep, look, observe, watch”).

Verb

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

1. (intransitive)
   1. To look slyly, or with the eyes half closed, or through a crevice; to peep.

      Close your eyes, and no peeking!

   2. 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. (video games, especially first-person shooters) To briefly move out of cover (to gather visual information).

      Sniper watching the site; don't peek.

2. (transitive)
   1. To take a look at; to check out.

      Peek my new shoes.

   2. (computing, 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
• peekaboo
• peeker
• peekhole
• screen peek

Translations

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

• Afrikaans: loer (af)
• 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)
• Galician: guichar (gl), espreitar (gl), axexar (gl)
• German: lugen (de), (colloquial) gucken (de), (colloquial) linsen (de)
• Hebrew: הציץ (he) (heitsíts)
• Italian: sbirciare (it)
• Japanese: 覗く (ja) (のぞく, nozoku)
• Mokilese: wujohr
• 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), pishpar (Argentina), pispar (es) (South America), atisbar (es), echar un vistazo
• 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