1 ~ (at sth) (of birds) to move the beak forward quickly and hit or bite sth:
[V] A robin was pecking at crumbs on the ground. * Hens pecked around in the yard. * [VN] A bird had pecked a hole in the sack. * Vultures had pecked out the dead goat's eyes.
2 [VN] ~ sb (on sth) (informal) to kiss sb lightly and quickly:
He pecked her on the cheek as he went out. * She pecked his cheek.
IDIOMS
a / the pecking order (informal, often humorous) the order of importance in relation to one another among the members of a group:
New Zealand is at the top of the pecking order of rugby nations. * to be first in the pecking order
PHRASALVERBS
peck at sth to eat only a very small amount of a meal because you are not hungry:
She sat nervously pecking at her food.
Part of speech: noun
1 (informal) a quick kiss:
He gave her a friendly peck on the cheek.
2 an act of pecking sb/sth:
The budgerigar gave a quick peck at the seed.
Rate this entry
About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for peck is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is peck a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, peck is tagged as verb.
Does peck appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — peck appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
