peer
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /pɪə̯/
enpr: pîr
ipa: /pɪ(ə)ɹ/
rhymes: -ɪə(ɹ)
homophone: pier
Forms: form: peers
form: peering
form: peered
form: peered
form: pire
form: pyre
Etymology: From Middle English peren, pyren, piren (“to peer, gaze”), perhaps from Old English *pȳran (“to look, peer”), from Proto-West Germanic *pūrijan (“to look”), related to Saterland Frisian pierje (“to look”), Dutch Low Saxon piren (“to look”), West Flemish pieren (“to look with narrowed eyes, squint at”), Dutch pieren (“to look closely at, examine”), Middle English pouren (“to gaze, look closely”), English pore (“to study meticulously”). Compare also West Frisian pluere (“to peer”), Dutch pluren (“to gaze squintingly”), German Low German plieren (“to blink”), Danish plire (“to peer”), Swedish plira, blira (“to peer”), and thence ultimately related to the root of English blear.
The sense meaning "to be visible" is perhaps from a shortening of appear.
Senses: examples: text: […] I should be still / Plucking the grass, to know where sits the wind, / Peering in maps for ports, and piers, and roads;
ref: c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]:
text: As if thro’ a dungeon grate he peer’d
With broad and burning face.
ref: 1798, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in Lyrical Ballads, London: J. & A. Arch, Part III, p. 17, And strait the Sun was fleck’d with bars (Heaven’s mother send us grace)
text: He walked slowly past the gate and peered through a narrow gap in the cedar hedge. The girl was moving along a sanded walk, toward a gray, unpainted house, with a steep roof, broken by dormer windows.
ref: 1900, Charles W[addell] Chesnutt, chapter I, in The House Behind the Cedars, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton, Mifflin and Company […], →OCLC, page 10:
text: He would peek into the curtained windows, or, climbing upon the roof, peer down the black depths of the chimney in vain endeavor to solve the unknown wonders that lay within those strong walls.
ref: 1912 October, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Tarzan of the Apes”, in The All-Story, New York, N.Y.: Frank A. Munsey Co., →OCLC; republished as chapter VI, in Tarzan of the Apes, New York, N.Y.: A[lbert] L[evi] Burt Company, June 1914, →OCLC, page 65:
text: Long before you see the lean, handsome heads peering mildly over the half-doors of the loose boxes, you know that East Ilsley's business is training racehorses.
ref: 1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 164:
glosses: To look with difficulty, or as if searching for something.
examples: text: And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds, / So honour peereth in the meanest habit.
ref: c. 1590–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Taming of the Shrew”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene iii]:
text: I, I, let you alone, cunning Artificer! / See, hovv his gorget peeres aboue his govvne; / To tell the people, in vvhat danger he vvas.
ref: 1611, Ben[jamin] Jonson, Catiline His Conspiracy, London: […] [William Stansby?] for Walter Burre, →OCLC, Act IIII, signatures I, verso – I2, recto:
glosses: To come in sight; to appear.
Derived terms: outpeer
overpeer
peerer
peeringly
peery
underpeer