peer
Meanings
- To look with difficulty, or as if searching for something.
- To come in sight; to appear.
- A look; a glance.
- Somebody who is, or something that is, at a level or of a value equal (to that of something else).
- Someone who is approximately the same age (as someone else).
- A noble with a title, i.e., a peerage, and in times past, with certain rights and privileges not enjoyed by commoners.
- A comrade; a companion; an associate.
- To make equal in rank.
- To carry communications traffic terminating on one's own network on an equivalency basis to and from another network, usually without charge or payment. Contrast with transit where one pays another network provider to carry one's traffic.
- Someone who pees, someone who urinates.
Pronunciation
Word forms
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.