To examine in a prying manner. Examples occur in in Chaucer, Skelton, &c. (N.E.D.).
1789. A vain trifling curiosity to pry into secrets, to meddle with the business of others, and to peek into privacies.—Mass. Spy, June 18.
1834. I used to carry a great apple to school in my pocket every day und give to him to get him to set behind me when I was reading, where he could peak into my book, and when I come to a hard word, have him whisper it to me, and then I read it out loud.—Seba Smith (‘Major Downing’), ‘My Thirty Years Out of the Senate,’ p. 28. (1860.)
1839. I went along, and went to peak over, but hang me if I didn’t slip up.—‘Major Jack on a Whaler’; Havana (N.Y.) Republican, Aug. 21.
1848. The next instant the driver was peeking in at the window, as the Yankees say.—Yale Lit. Mag., xiii. 231 (March). (Italics in the original.)
1850. He keeled over on the grass, peeked through the trees, cock-a-whooped to Uncle Richard, strutted behind Bebby.—S. Judd, ‘Richard Edney,’ p. 227.
1853. Arter a spell, old Marm Harris come a-peakin’ over my shoulder, and bursts out a larfin.—Knick. Mag., xlii. 222 (Sept.).
1854.
| As once my dazzled eyes I set | |
| Where Julia’s neck and boddice met, | |
| She asked what I was seekin’; | |
| “There,—that,” said I, “is that Nankeen? | |
| —The lining of your waist I mean.” | |
| “No Sir,” said she, “that’s Pekin.” | |
Boston Evening Post, n.d. |
1857. He commenced peeking, as he called it, into every nook and corner on the boat.—San Francisco Call, Jan. 20.
1862.
| Zekle crep’ up quite unbeknown, | |
| An’ peeked in thru the winder, | |
| An’ there sot Huldy all alone, | |
| ’ith no one nigh to hender. | |
J. R. Lowell, ‘The Courtin’.’ |
1869. People do not listen over their spectacles,—they listen over their collars; they ‘peek’ over their spectacles.—E. E. Hale, ‘Ingham Papers,’ p. 175.
1869. We was all a winkin’, and a nudgin’ each other, and a peekin’ to see what was to come o’ it.—Mrs. Stowe, ‘The Widow’s Bandbox.’
1888. First putting me under promise to remain in one spot without “peeking,” as children say, he took out from the trunk in our room article after article for me.—Mrs. Custer, ‘Tenting on the Plains,’ pp. 422–3.
1890. One of the guests did “peek” through, and seeing the tables in the saloons with heaps of money, guarded by knives and revolvers, she was frightened into never looking again.—The same, ‘Following the Guidon,’ p. 160 (N.Y.).
