peer

verb

1. (intransitive)To look with difficulty, or as if searching for something.

   “[…] I should be still / Plucking the grass, to know where sits the wind, / Peering in maps for ports, and piers, and roads;”

   “As if thro’ a dungeon grate he peer’d With broad and burning face.”

   “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.”

   “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.”

   “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.”

2. (intransitive, obsolete)To come in sight; to appear.

   “And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds, / So honour peereth in the meanest habit.”

   “I, I, let you alone, cunning Artificer! / See, hovv his gorget peeres aboue his govvne; / To tell the people, in vvhat danger he vvas.”

3. To make equal in rank.

   “Being now Peered with the Lord Chancellor, and the Earl of Essex.”

4. (Internet)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.

noun

1. A look; a glance.

   “Blessed are those organisers who provide one-and-all with a name tag, for then the participants will chat together. A quick peer at your neighbour's lapel is much the simplest way to become introduced […]”

2. Somebody who is, or something that is, at a level or of a value equal (to that of something else).

   “In song he never had his peer.”

   “Shall they draw off to their privileged quarters, and consort only with their peers?”

3. Someone who is approximately the same age (as someone else).
4. A noble with a title, i.e., a peerage, and in times past, with certain rights and privileges not enjoyed by commoners.

   “a peer of the realm”

   “a noble peer of mickle trust and power”

5. A comrade; a companion; an associate.

   “He all his Peeres in beautie did surpas,”

6. (informal)Someone who pees, someone who urinates.

   “As was the caveat about peeing in a pool. Of course, peeing in a pool wasn't dangerous to the person ... If you peed in a pool, and you were carrying the polio virus, presumably *other* people were put at risk, not the peer (pee-er?).”

   “SOunds^([sic]) like you've already broken him quite well, if he's peeing when disciplined. Pretty sad. He's not a dog, not that treating a dog like this is any better either. You've turned your child into a submissive peer.”

   “Submissive peeing, on the other hand, IS related to anxiety. But submissive peeing is not marking. A submissive peer is generally a very submissive dog.”