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peek

USPEEK/pik/

Verbpeeks, peeking, peeked

Noun pluralpeeks

Often confused with peak and pique

4 meanings of peek

Practice

  1. 1
    verbcolloquialintransitive
    To look slyly, or with half-closed eyes, or through a crack or narrow opening.

    He lay still pretending to sleep, peeking at the clock through half-closed eyes.

    Neighbors peek through the blinds whenever a strange car parks on the street.

    Similarpeep, peer

    Note

    The word looks like a blend, and probably is one: Middle English pepen, "to peep", fused with keken, "to look, spy", the source of Scots keek. That ancestry explains the slyness, since peeking is looking you are not quite supposed to do. It usually takes at or through, and often out or in: peek at the clock, peek through the blinds.

  2. 2
    nouncountable
    A quick look at something.

    Can I take a peek at the menu before we order?

    The open house offered buyers a quick peek inside the renovated lofts.

    Similarlook, glance, peep, glimpse

  3. 3
    verbcolloquialintransitive
    To be just partly in view, as though peering out from behind cover.

    The sun peeked out from behind the clouds for a few minutes.

    Green shoots peek through the snow in early spring.

    Similarpeep, poke

Less common meaning

  1. 4
    verbdatedtransitive
    To retrieve the value stored at a particular address in a computer's memory.

    The program peeks the byte at that address to check whether a key has been pressed.

    We are peeking the value from the first index's memory location.
    2006, Gary Willoughby, PureBasic: A Beginner's Guide to Computer Programming
    Note

    A programmer's verb from the days of direct memory access, paired with poke, which writes a value to an address as peek reads one; both were instructions in early versions of BASIC. Unlike the everyday verb, it takes the value as its direct object, with no at: peek the value from an address. Outside such dialects of BASIC the use now sounds dated.

Practice

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Origin

From Middle English peken, piken, pyken ("to peep"), probably a fusion of Middle English pepen ("to peep") and keken, kiken ("to keek, look, spy"), in effect a blend of peep and keek.