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Peer   Listen
verb
Peer  v. i.  (past & past part. peered; pres. part. peering)  
1.
To come in sight; to appear. (Poetic) "So honor peereth in the meanest habit." "See how his gorget peers above his gown!"
2.
To look narrowly or curiously or intently; to peep; as, the peering day. "Peering in maps for ports, and piers, and roads." "As if through a dungeon grate he peered."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Peer" Quotes from Famous Books



... degrees, and thicken at the bottom as they climb. Thus, they will present you (in half a dozen or eight years) with incomparable hedges; because they are perpetually green, able to resist the winds better than most which I know, the holly only excepted, which indeed has no peer. ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... this little race has no peer, as is sufficiently proven by their remarkable record in football, baseball, and track athletics. A few years ago I asked that good friend of the Indian, Gen. R. H. Pratt, why he did not introduce football ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman

... circumstances. But from time immemorial there had been Drakes all round the countryside of Tavistock and the family name stood high. Francis was called after his godfather, Francis Russell, son and heir of Henry's right-hand reforming peer, Lord Russell, progenitor of the Dukes of Bedford down to ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood

... fiery car speeds on her iron way, Through hill, o'er valley quickly do we fly. There lies the grot of Adelberg, and day Sees us past Gratze's fortress hasten by Like lightning's flash, nor stop until we spy St. Stephen's dome from out the darkness peer. Like bas reliefs her turrets in the sky O'ertop Vienna, great the pious fear Of holy men, who such vast beauteous ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham

... assured in the American preface to this volume, that while it exhibits Henry Rogers as the peer of Butler as a reasoner, it also shows him not inferior to Lamb as a humorist. Much as we are inclined to echo the critical decisions of prefaces, we regret being unable to indorse this confident statement. In amplitude, vigor, and fertility of thought we must think the author of the "Analogy" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... thought she had drowned herself, but when he looked closely into the pool, and contrived to peer through the cloud of hair which floated like fine seaweed all over the top of it, he managed to distinguish a woman's head and shoulders underneath, and looking closer he saw, he was sure, a fish's tail! His knees quaked under him, at that sight, for he realized that the lovely ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... this juncture, we had a special service at the Room, at which our attention was particularly called to what we always spoke of as 'the field of missionary labour'. The East was represented among 'the saints' by an excellent Irish peer, who had, in his early youth, converted and married a lady of colour; this Asiatic shared in our Sunday morning meetings, and was an object of helpless terror to me; I shrank from her amiable caresses, and vaguely identified her ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... had been merely an illusion, how terrible it was to think that conscience could raise such fearful phantoms, and give them visible form, and make them move before one! What sort of life would his be, if day and night, shadows of his crime were to peer at him from silent corners, to mock him from secret places, to whisper in his ear as he sat at the feast, to wake him with icy fingers as he lay asleep! As the thought crept through his brain, he grew pale with terror, and the air seemed to him to have become ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde

... read "Brand" or "Peer Gynt" and ask such questions? No heart so overflowed with human yearning, no soul ever breathed grander, nobler ideals than Henrik Ibsen. True, he did not prostrate himself before the idols of the conventional mob, nor did his sacrificial fires ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... Zee Chef departs!" announced Arnold disappearing down the stairs leading to the cabin from whence in a short time the aroma of delicious coffee was wafted up to the three boys in the pilot house, each striving to peer farther into the fog which seemed to be getting thicker each ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson

... works, plots, fights 'mid rude affairs, With squires, knights, kings his strength compares; Till late he learned through doubt and fear, Broad England harbored not his peer: Unwilling still the last to own, The genius ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns

... boys were at the edge of the fissure at length, and leaned over to peer down through the bracken and heather which grew on the sides of the ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn

... and the green and the gold. Yes, for the senses are goads, but the lineage noble, Not for the warren or hutch to be cornered and sold, Then there is freedom and ease, and a dream that persuades one On, till the track quakes on black whence the death-lilies peer. So the bronzed shoulder, that sets to the crust of the boulder Heaving it up—as the mill-wheel that turns at the weir— Bring—? They bring silence and candles and creaking and whispers. Death ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet

... Connell sprang to his feet and the men quickly turned to their grazing horses, one of the troopers, far in advance, could be seen close to the crest of the divide. He had dismounted to creep forward and peer over, and now, half-way back to where he had left his horse, was waving his hat, with right arm extended from directly over his head down to the horizontal ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King

... Browning Early Spring Alfred Tennyson Lines Written in Early Spring William Wordsworth In Early Spring Alice Meynell Spring Thomas Nashe A Starling's Spring Rondel James Cousins "When Daffodils begin to Peer" William Shakespeare Spring, from "In Memoriam" Alfred Tennyson The Spring Returns Charles Leonard Moore "When the Hounds of Spring" Algernon Charles Swinburne Song, "Again rejoicing Nature sees" ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... and clear, Roland he calls, his friend and peer; "Sir Friend! ride now to help me here! Parted today, great ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... wide to Buck. So wide, indeed, that he had no idea of its limits, nor any desire to seek them. He preferred that his eyes should dwell only upon those things which presented themselves before a plain, wholesome vision. He had no desire to peer into the tainted recesses of any other life than that which he had always known. And in his outlook was to be witnessed the careful guidance of his friend, the Padre. Nor was his capacity stunted thereby, nor his strong manhood. On the contrary, it ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... in Gouda. As we walked along shady streets, lit by the clear shining of canals, children ran after us as at Hamlin they ran after the Pied Piper. If for one instant the strangers paused to study a beautiful, carved door, or to peer into the window of an antiquary's at blue and white jars, or to gaze up at the ferocious head of a Turk over a chemist's shop, or to laugh at a house with window-blinds painted in red and white diamonds, a crowd of flaxen heads collected round us, little hands fluttered over ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... raised and dropped. He merely sighed as if in sleep, and continued to breathe heavily, regularly. After a moment he was conscious that the form above him had disappeared. Then very slowly he turned his head and raised his eyelids merely enough to peer through the lashes. The sailors sat cross-legged in a loose circle on the floor of the forecastle. At the four corners of the group sat four significant figures. They were like the posts of the prize ring supporting the rope; that is to say, the less important sailors who sat between ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand

... following, he, followed by his groom, rode away for the Saracen's Head at Heckleston, where he was to put up, for the races that were to begin on the day following, and presented as handsome an appearance as a peer in those days need have ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... National Gallery. Observe the Old Lady, aged 83, the massive painting of her face, and the outline of her figure set so firmly against the background. Here is Realism, frank and straightforward, almost defiant in its strength. Turn to the portrait of A Jewish Rabbi. Here is Idealism. You peer and peer, and from the brown background emerges a brown garment, relieved by the black cap, and the black cloak that falls over his left shoulder. Luminous black and luminous brown! Brown is the side of the face in shadow, brown is the brow in shadow. All is tributary to the glory of the golden ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes

... even though there were no imported sparrows to drive this lovely native from the trees of a sleepy city; and he sat very still in the top branches, clad in his gorgeous livery of orange and black, and scarcely stirred save to slant his head and peer doubtfully at last year's cocoons, which clung to the bark like shreds of ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers

... Marquis of Norborough been celebrated through his entire life for his furies? Was there not a hushed-up rumor that he had once thrown a decanter at his wife, and so nearly killed her that people had been asking one another in whispers if a peer of the realm could be hanged. He had been born that way, so had she. Her school-room days had been a horror to her, and also a terror, because she had often almost flung ink-bottles and heavy rulers at her silly, lying ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... eyes, the beautiful, lovable face, the modest glance, the innocent blushes—had nature such masks for her vilest offspring? The mere animal senses should have recognized at the first this deadly thing, as animals recognize their foes; and he had lived with the viper, believing her the peer of his spotless mother. She was his wife! Even at that moment the passionate love of yesterday stirred in his veins and moved him to ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... butler, made his appearance; but observing that his master was occupied, he immediately stopped at the door, erect, motionless, and with a face as melancholy as if he was performing mute at the porch of some departed peer of the realm; for it is an understood thing, that the greater the rank of the defunct the longer must be the face, and, of course, the better ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat

... forest-brook The farthest hem of silence shook; When in the hollow shades I heard— Was it a spirit or a bird? Or, strayed from Eden, desolate, Some Peri calling to her mate, Whom nevermore her mate would cheer? "Pe-ri! Pe-ri! Peer!" ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various

... from short speeches made by the Duke in the House of Lords after the intentions of the government had been made known, but before the Emancipation Bill came up to that house. Although the Duke earnestly deprecated these preliminary discussions, he was called up almost every night by some peer or other.] ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington

... rock! Gods of my birthplace, daemons and heroes, honor to all! Then I name thee, claim thee for our patron, co-equal in praise —Ay, with Zeus the Defender, with Her of the aegis and spear! Also ye of the bow and the buskin, praised be your peer, Now, henceforth and forever,—O latest to whom I upraise Hand and heart and voice! For Athens, leave pasture and flock! Present to help, potent to save, ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various

... rises to its highest office. The laboratory routine of ascertaining the conductivity, polarisability, and other electrical properties of matter is dull and exacting work, but it opens to the student new windows through which to peer at the architecture of matter. That architecture, as it rises to his view, discloses one law of structure after another; what in a first and clouded glance seemed anomaly is now resolved and reconciled; order displays itself where once anarchy alone appeared. When the investigator ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... "An ancient peer of France and former colonel of cavalry, it was said that he believed in neither God nor devil. Not believing, therefore, in a future life he had abused the present life in every way, and had become a live ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... few minutes they thundered into the little settlement, where the dogs were already barking and leaping against a close-shut door. Frightened black faces began to peer out. Low exclamations and guttural ejaculations were heard as the armed men scattered, one to each cabin, while the sheriff hammered at the door where the ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden

... she tried to peer through the gloom to see Bunny. At first, after the door had slid shut, she could only dimly see where her brother stood, even though she had hold of his hand. But now, as her eyes became used to the darkness, she could make out that Bunny was ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope

... time there was grouped around me a curious set of people, all of whom seemed to me so horribly ugly that I felt well satisfied that I had been born on the Earth. Among the company were some eminent scholars who did no more than peer at one another and walk about me, while they were waiting for some learned professors to arrive from a distance. A long, tedious period ensued ere the company of judges or examiners were ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris

... I, ignoring the mayor's remark, "how easy it is to fix up a train of coincidences so that the result seems to savor of the supernatural. Now, last night my wife imagined that she saw a priest in a mask peer in at ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... in the following narrative, which brings out in bold relief the traits of courage, hardihood, and devotion, all displayed by woman, in most trying and critical situations, wherein she showed herself the peer of the stoutest and most skillful of that hardy breed of men—the hunters of ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... country in which you do not live. If you try to obtain citizenship in it, at once the court and retinue pack the royal archives and treasure and move away beyond the hills. It is a hillside that you turn your head to peer at from the windows ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry

... only child, and spoiled as only children are in nine cases out of ten. His father was a peer's second son, and married a wealthy cotton-spinner's niece for the sake of her money, which money lasted him about as long as his own constitution. When he died, the widow was left with ten thousand pounds and the handsome, curly-pated, mischievous boy. She ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... twinkling, where the Boers, indifferent to our little party, were carousing and drinking their dop. Now and then a yawn or groan as a man stretches his cramped limbs. Down below under us an expanse of dark plain, like a murky sea, reaching to our feet, which we peer across, but can make out nothing. Peep-of-day time is the Boer's favourite hour for a call, and we were all very much on the qui vive when the white line showed along the east. No doubt, however, they ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps

... streets in silence, with the speed of a guilty flight, and both thrilling with incommunicable terrors. In time, however, and above all by their quick pace of walking, the pair began to rise to firmer spirits; the lady ceased to peer about the corners; and Challoner, emboldened by the resonant tread and distant figure of a constable, returned to the charge with more of spirit ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... certificates taking the place of real profits—of almost worth-nothing shares in worthless holes in the ground selling on a face value of a next-door profit-yielding neighbor. The American is without a peer as pioneer on land, in mine, in forest; but the boomster, who invariably follows on the heels of that pioneer, is also the most expert "houn' dawg" to rouse the wildcatter. Canadians have too often wakened ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

... ducks sailed slowly up the river, and each as it passed twisted its head to peer up at the spectator. Presently the drake who led them touched bottom, and his red-gold webs appeared. Then he paddled ashore, lifted up his voice, waggled his tail, and with a crescendo of quacking conducted his harem into ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... in prison for two years, always hoping that Louis XII would reclaim him as peer of the kingdom of France; but Louis, much disturbed by the loss of the battle of Garigliano, which robbed him of the kingdom of Naples, had enough to do with his own affairs without busying himself ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... In all her letters one finds a plaintive tone, a little moaning sound that shows how slightly her nature had been changed. No longer, however, did she throw herself away upon dullards or brutes. An English peer—Lord Peterborough—not realizing that she was different from other actresses of that loose-lived age, said to her coarsely ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... to himself as he walked away: they were all together, the lordship and the ladyship, young Lord Lomond too!—and Phil Compton, whitewashed, a peer of the realm, and still, the scoundrel! a handsome fellow enough: with an air about him, a man who might still dazzle a youngster unaccustomed to the world. He had re-entered the bosom of his family, and doubtless was weeping upon Philip's neck, and bandying about ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant

... until his senses reeled. Then he crawled on hands and knees to the ledge's brink and tried to peer over. ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... took his seat in parliament as peer of France, and subsequently did homage to Louis XII., as his suzerain for his estates in Flanders; an acknowledgment of inferiority not at all palatable to the Spanish historians, who insist with much satisfaction on the haughty refusal of his wife, the archduchess, to take part in ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... LADY. It is the snowdrop; growing, snow enfurled; Till it peer forth, undreamt of ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen

... peer,' said Mr. Chaffanbrass, bringing his wig forward over his left eye in a manner that was almost irresistible —'a Scotch peer—a member of Parliament, and son of a Scotch peer; and you have been a member of the Government, I believe, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... coat of any other colour than blue or black (regimentals, of course, excepted), would certainly be condemned to a quarantine in the servant's hall. There are colours which, if worn for trousers by the first peer of the realm, would be as condemnatory of his character as a gentleman, as levanting on the settling-day for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various

... him right to be turned out of the troop, and that he must keep a sharp look out lest he should sow disaffection among the Yeomanry. Making friends with Ramsbotham! never taking out a gun! The country was gone to the dogs when such as he was to be a peer! ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the crew of the Merman were buried in slumber, at nine thirty-two three of the members were awake with heads protruding out of their bunks, trying to peer through the gloom, while the fourth dreamt that a tea-tray was falling down a never-ending staircase. On the floor of the forecastle something was cursing ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs

... of the session of 1794 the impeachment of Hastings had come to an end, and Burke bade farewell to parliament. Richard Burke was elected in his father's place at Malton. The king was bent on making the champion of the old order of Europe a peer. His title was to be Lord Beaconsfield, and it was designed to annex to the title an income for three lives. The patent was being made ready, when all was arrested by the sudden death of the son who was to Burke more than life. The old man's grief was agonizing and inconsolable. "The storm ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... all the day Urging my gondola with oar-strokes light, Always beside one shadowy waterway I pause and peer, with eager, jealous sight, Toward the Piazza where Pepita stands, Wooing the hungry pigeons ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge

... for going forth and risking everything, and he noticed with pleasure that the hunter began to shift about and to peer into the forest as if some plan for action was turning in his mind. But he said nothing, resolved to leave it all to Tayoga and Willet, and by-and-by, in the dark, to which his eyes had grown accustomed, he saw the two exchanging glances. He was able ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... on the road which leads to mind. The greater size is correlated with longer life. The lessons of experience come to it over and over again, and it can and must learn them. It is the intelligent, remembering, thinking type. The insect had begun to peer into the world of invisible and intangible relations, the vertebrate will some day see them. This much is prophecied in his very structure. He must be heir to ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler

... I see the blackness of the tomb Where'er I turn, and grave mould on each brow; And grinning faces peer out of the gloom— Good God! ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... himself had done very little more. Lying on his right side, with his arm doubled under him for a pillow, the cumbrous blanket enclosing him from head to foot, an irregular opening in front of his face allowed him to peer through the folds at the camp-fire, the oak, and the chieftain. The last still sat leaning slightly backward, with his shoulders against the trunk, his arms folded over his knees, while he seemed to be gazing off into vacancy. The heels of his moccasins ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... motion, crouched down, signalling the others to do the same. It was only just in time, too. Fortunately for the girls they were in a sort of depression, and by crouching down they got out of sight, as one of the men came forward to peer through the underbrush. He saw nothing, as was evidenced by ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose

... and fully agreed, "he takes as an offence, yes. It's his theory that he still has rights," she smiled, "though he is a miserable peer." ...
— The Outcry • Henry James

... would recede into pitiable insignificance if the callous tourist drew on arithmetic on it; but left to compete for the honors simply on scenic grace and beauty—the grand, the august and the sublime being barred the contest—it could challenge the old world and the new to produce its peer. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... elegance of his dress than by his air of profound melancholy. Then briefly, but precisely, the sorrowful story of the Marquis de ——— ("out of consideration for the nobleman's feelings" the name was withheld) was told: how, the son of a peer of France, he had married, while yet a minor, against the wishes of his stern father; how his young wife and infant daughter had been spirited away by the stern father's orders; how on his death-bed the father had confessed his evil deed to his son, ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... spirit of the sea-robbers from whom he sprang seemed embodied in his gigantic form, his enormous strength, his savage countenance, his desperate bravery. No other knight under heaven, his enemies confessed, was William's peer. No other man could bend William's bow. His mace crashed through a ring of English warriors to the foot of the standard. He rose to his greatest heights in moments when other men despaired. No other man who ever sat upon the ...
— An Iron Will • Orison Swett Marden

... governor and chief royal commissioner was offered in turn to several English statesmen and declined by all of them. It was eventually accepted by Lord Gosford, an Irish peer without experience in public life. With him were associated as commissioners Sir Charles Grey, afterwards {46} governor of Jamaica, and Sir George Gipps, afterwards governor of New South Wales. These two men were evidently intended to offset ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles

... of this imaginative delight he carried into his walks the old keen habits of observation. He would peer into the hedges for what living things were to be found there. He would whistle softly to the lizards basking on the low walls which border the roads, to try his old power ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... of song saturated with these same bird-notes? 'Where the bee sucks,' 'When daisies pied,' 'Under the greenwood tree,' 'It was a lover and his lass,' 'When daffodils begin to peer,' 'Ye spotted snakes,' have all a ring in them which was caught not in the roar of London, or the babble of the Globe theatre, but in the woods of Charlecote, and along ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... fastened in the trim manner suggestive of a craft laid by for the night. At the same instant, too, she caught sight of a third form—that of a man who had been seated on a fixed capstan, and who now strode forward to peer at ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy

... or youth just emerging from the state of boyhood, lay low in a neighbouring thicket with his head just elevated sufficiently above the grass to enable his black eyes to peer over it. He was what we of the nineteenth century term a savage. That is to say, he was unkempt, unwashed, and almost naked—but not uneducated, though books had nothing to do with ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne

... up to peer through the window at the village street; it was empty. The snow was falling thickly, blotting out everything at a few steps' distance. Undecided, she paused in front of the bed, but only for a moment; then she suddenly pulled away the feather-bed roughly and determinedly, ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... figures appeared on the beach, a quarter of a mile away. They had descended through one of the sandy and ravaged channelings which broke at intervals the regulated rim of the hills, and they came on toward our two strollers. Medora closed her eyes to peer at them. "Are they marching ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller

... aspect of affairs. The possibilities of estrangement were incalculable. Their lives were developing on entirely different lines. He had been admitted to the inmost circle of men of science as an intellectual peer; he was elected F.R.S. when he was barely twenty-six, and received the Royal Medal the following year, as well as being chosen to serve on the Council of the Society; he wrote; he lectured at the Royal Institution. And yet, with all the support of the leaders in science, he could ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley

... with a spire in their midst, and which came under the jurisdiction of Upham. In all these villages people were wont to run from the windows to the doors when they saw the doctor's sulky whirl past, peer after it, up or down the road, to see where it might stop, and speculate if this old soul were about to leave the world, or that new soul ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... window many a time of year, Strange faces peer, Solemn though not unkind, Their wits in search of something left behind Time ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman

... peer over the high wall of the palace garden noticed there a pretty little crippled boy with large dreamy, thoughtful eyes, beneath the grave glance of which wrongdoers felt uneasy, and, although they did not know it then, ...
— The Little Lame Prince - Rewritten for Young Readers by Margaret Waters • Dinah Maria Mulock

... Oh, season of delight! My summer's park! Uneaseful joy to look, to lurk, to hark— I peer for friends, am ready day and night,— Where linger ye, my friends? The ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... are indebted to him for more information about their teaching and writings, than to any other of the Latin Fathers." [38:1] Dr. Doellinger is a Church historian whom even the Bishop of Durham cannot afford to ignore,—as, in his own field of study, he has, perhaps, no peer in existence,—and yet he here states explicitly, not certainly that Jerome was extremely ignorant of early Christian literature, but that, in this very department, he was specially well informed. The learned monk of Bethlehem ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen

... peeress in her own right, or the daughter of a peer, marries a private gentleman, their coats of arms are not conjoined paleways, as baron and femme, but are placed upon separate shields by the side of each other; they are usually inclosed in a mantel, the ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous

... attempted to awe and controul those of the whole kingdom? If such be the meaning of the Writer and his Employers, what a pity Westmoreland has not a Lunatic Asylum for the accommodation of the whole Body! In the same strain, and from the same quarter, we are triumphantly told 'that no Peer of Parliament shall interfere in Elections.' How injurious then to these Monitors and their Cause the report of the Hereditary High Sheriff's massy subscription, and his zealous countenance! Let him be entreated formally ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... Nietzsche, et al., the great man is an autonomous product, a being without a peer, a demigod, "Uebermensch." He can be explained neither by heredity, ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... tongue And devours a morsel of rancid butter." So the hand of the child, automatic, Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay. I could see nothing behind that child's eye. I have seen eyes in the street Trying to peer through lighted shutters, And a crab one afternoon in a pool, An old crab with barnacles on his back, Gripped the end of a stick which ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot

... however, grows dark, and from 1846 the new peer of France notes the gradual tottering of the edifice of royalty. The revolution of 1848 bursts out. Nothing could be more thrilling than the account, hour by hour, of the events of the three days of February. VICTOR HUGO is not merely a spectator of this great ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo

... walk upon the Beds!" seemed to limit the possible area to that within reach of hand or stick. Darsie poked and peered, lifted the hanging fronds which fell over the rockwork border of the lily pond, stood on tiptoe on the rustic seat to peer between the branches of surrounding trees, but could discover nothing in the semblance of a paper packet. It was the same story in the rose garden, though the thick foliage on the pergolas seemed to offer numberless ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... fire lest he should merely kill a soldier, and so make an uproar and rouse suspicions without the slightest profit. It was not probable that Coronado would pay him for shooting the wrong man, and setting on foot a dangerous investigation. So the desperado continued to peer through the dim night, cursing his stars and everybody's stars for not shining better, and seeing his opportunity slip rapidly away. After Thurstane and the others had passed, after the chance of murder had stalked by him like ...
— Overland • John William De Forest

... clock, my life away! Even a second seems a day. Even a minute seems a year, Peopled with ghosts, that press and peer Into my face so charnel white, Lit by the devilish, dancing light. Tick, little clock! mete out my fate: Tortured and tense I wait, ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service

... his brow, and so he had continued to do it, and whenever it had looked a little rough and unkempt, his mother used to say: "Never mind, Josy, the roughest colt often makes the finest horse." Whether it was that his eyes had always been accustomed to peer through the long hair that overhung them, or whether it was merely his nature cannot be known with any certainty, but there was something shy in his expression, as if he never could look anything full in the face, or come to a decision on any subject, and even when his hand went out ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... mouth, like a cavern, into which the hooked nose seemed anxious to peer; there came from it a subdued rolling sound, as from a distant organ with the ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... gone; but the hall, the farmer's fireside, the hut, perhaps the palace, the counting-room, the workshop, the village, the city, life's high places and low ones, may all produce their poets, whom a common temperament pervades like an electric sympathy. Peer or ploughman, we will muster them pair by pair and shoulder to shoulder. Even society, in its most artificial state, consents to this arrangement. These factory girls from Lowell shall mate themselves with the pride of drawing-rooms ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... was the pink of courtesy, and paid his respects in due order to his brother's friends the next day, Colin attending in his old aide-de-camp fashion. It was curious to see them together. The old peer was not at all ungracious to his brother; indeed, Colin had been agreeably surprised by an amount of warmth and brotherliness that he had never experienced from him before, as if old age had brought a disposition to cling to the remnant of the once inconveniently ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... him up right honourably, and dispensed with his bastardry that he might hold any sacred dignity; and in process of time he was made an honourable Cardinal. So the King returned with great honour into his own land, and from that time he was called Don Ferrando the Great, the Emperor's Peer; and it was said of him in songs that he had passed the passes of Aspa in ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various

... handwriting," he chuckled. He eyed the limp peer almost roguishly. "I see, I see," he said. "Very charming, quite delightful! Girls must have their little romance! I suppose you two young people are exchanging love-letters all day. Delightful, quite delightful! Don't look ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse

... Tiglath-pileser crossed the river, and made a demonstration in force before the Babylonian fortresses. He visited, one after another, Sippar, Nipur, Babylon, Borsippa, Kuta, Kishu, Dilbat, and Uruk, "cities without peer," and offered in all of them sacrifices to the gods,—to Bel, to Zirbanit, to Nebo, to Tashmit, and to Nirgal. Karduniash bowed down before him, but he abstained from giving any provocation to the Kalda, and satisfied with having convinced Nabunazir that Assyria ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... Whig families. With the popular feeling thus warmly enlisted against the ministry, George III. was now emboldened to make war on it by violent means; and, accordingly, when the bill came up in the House of Lords, he caused it to be announced, by Lord Temple, that any peer who should vote in its favour would be regarded as an enemy by the king. Four days later the House of Commons, by a vote of 153 to 80, resolved that "to report any opinion, or pretended opinion, of his majesty upon any bill ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... was standing near the entrance, a tall lady, dressed in brown silk and wearing glasses, walked up from the direction of Broadway. She began to peer about like one who ...
— Cast Upon the Breakers • Horatio Alger

... now, as my eyes become accustomed to the dim light," said Minnie, gazing up wistfully into the vaulted roof, where the edges of projecting rocks seemed to peer out of darkness. "Surely this must be a place ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne

... Wang Ch'iang to the blush! What a remarkable person! Where was she born? and whence does she come? One thing is true that in Fairy-land there is no second like her! that in the Purple Courts of Heaven there is no one fit to be her peer! Forsooth, who can it ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... account be moved,' said the dark little Belgian doctor, whose eyes seemed to peer so quizzically through his spectacles; and he said ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett

... worked—into sticky lumps, which they could hug under their chins and carry up the slope to be dumped upon the grass at the side. Every minute one or the other would stop, lift his brown head over the edge, peer about, and sniff, and listen, then fall to work again furiously, as if the whole future and fortune of the pond were hanging upon his toil. After a half-hour's labour the canal was lengthened very perceptibly—fully six or eight inches—and as if by common consent the two brown excavators stopped ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... you ail, your aunt an ant may kill, You in a vale may buy a veil and Bill may pay the bill. Or if to France your bark you steer, at Dover it may be A peer appears upon the pier, who blind, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... at heart she was jealous and wanted Kriemhild to acknowledge her as superior. One day they had a hot dispute, Kriemhild declaring that her husband was without peer in the world, and Brunhild retorting that since he was Gunther's vassal he must be his inferior. Kriemhild made an angry avowal that she would ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various

... He tried to peer into that world ahead, dazzling, distant as the sun. But then with a sigh he returned to the news, and little by little his mind again was gripped and held by the most compelling of all appeals so far revealed in humanity's ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole

... favourite falcon on his wrist, four squires in immediate attendance carrying his arms; and behind these stretches a merry cavalcade, on which the chestnuts shed their milky blossoms. In the absence of the old peer, young Hopeful spends his time as befits his rank and expectations. He grooms his steed, plays with his hawks, feeds his hounds, and labours diligently to acquire grace and dexterity in the use of arms. ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... three chulos, who talked together in voices loud enough to be heard throughout their meal. And it was of Sebastiano they spoke, giving dramatic recitals of his daring deeds, telling each other of what he had done, of what he could do, and that Madrid had never seen his rival or peer. And then his conquests. It was true that noble ladies—beautiful and noble—had sent him messages and tokens. Gonsalvo, who was his intimate friend, could tell many things if he chose. Sebastiano had brilliant triumphs. Once he had even been in great danger because ...
— The Pretty Sister Of Jose - 1889 • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... managing somehow or other to lift a corner and peer out, saw that the dawn was breaking in the eastern sky, and that a new day was just beginning. The sun was rising.... She went back again to tell the others, but she could not find them. She did not try very hard; she did not look for them. She just closed her eyes.... The swallows ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... even to think about it. He must call the Chief before the men were awake. So he managed to get upon his feet land steady himself against the wall, for he felt dizzy and faint when he tried to walk. But he managed to get into the hall, and peer into each room, and more and more as he went he felt he was alone in the house. Then he had failed and the men were gone! Aw Gee! Pat too! What a fool he had been, thinking he could manage the affair! He ought to have taken the Chief into his ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill

... a frequent, almost constant visitor at the red-brick house on the knoll. The gossips were busy. Sage winks were exchanged when Alix and he were seen together in her automobile; many a head was lowered so that its owner might peer quizzically over the upper rims of spectacles as they strolled past the postoffice and other public porches; convicting feminine smiles pursued the young man up the lane leading to Alix's home. There were some doubtful head-shakings, but in the main Windomville was rather well pleased with the ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon

... hint, and he began to peer about between the clouds, until at length he saw that the trouble was coming from a certain hill which stood in the centre ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton

... king. He treated the Lords with an easy familiarity which robbed opposition of its seriousness. "Their debates amused him," he said in his indolent way; and he stood chatting before the fire while peer after peer poured invectives on his ministers, and laughed louder than the rest when Shaftesbury directed his coarsest taunts at the barrenness of the queen. Courtiers were entrusted with the secret "management" of the Commons; obstinate country gentlemen were brought ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green

... of all the trading houses, and, in his head, he must keep the market price, "when laid down in Liverpool," of mahogany, copra, copal, rubber, palm oil, and ivory. To see that the agent has not overlooked a few bags of ground nuts, or a dozen puncheons of oil, he must go on shore and peer into the compound of each factory, and on board he must keep peace between the Kroo boys and the black deck passengers, and see that the white passengers with a temperature of 105, do not drink more than is good for them. ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis

... defy exaggeration. The unique autobiographic interest—so fresh and keen and personal, and yet so free from the odious intrusion of actual personality—of the earlier epistolary presentment of Saunders and Alan Fairford, of Darsie and Green Mantle; Peter Peebles, peer of Scott's best; Alan's journey and Darsie's own wanderings; the scenes at the Provost's dinner-table and in Tam Turnpenny's den; that unique figure, the skipper of the Jumping Jenny; the extraordinarily effective presentment of Prince Charles, already in his decadence, if not yet in his dotage; ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury

... her, the faculty did not. And those like Professor Cane, who had the opportunity and the ability to peer into the depths of the girl's soul, took an immediate and increasing interest in her. Often her own naive manners broke down the bars of convention, and brought her enduring friendships among the men ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... Whitelocke was born in the year 1759, and received his early education in the Grammar School at Marlborough. His father was steward to John, fourth Earl of Aylesbury; and the peer, in {202} acknowledgment of the faithful services of his trusted dependent, placed young Whitelocke at Lochee's Military Academy, near Chelsea. There he remained till 1777, when, the Earl's friendly disposition remaining in full force, and the youth's predilection ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various

... brown hair, innocent of kink or curl; a florid face, bronzed and tanned by years of life in sun and wind and storm; clean-shaven but for the drooping brown moustache that conceals the rugged lines of his mouth, and twinkling blue-gray eyes that peer out with searching gaze from under their shaggy brows. Firmness, strength, self-reliance, even sternness, can be read in every line; but around the gathering crowsfeet at the corners of his eyes, and lurking under the shadow ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... shroud'—you know, for years I thought it meant one of those fascinating places with swinging half-doors and rows and rows of feet visible from the outside, into which one's nurse would never let one peer, and I thought 'shroud' was a sort of cracker to be eaten with the beer! Wasn't ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... me on the move. The very thought of doing a guard made me tremble all over. He swore at me and said he'd heard these tales before and told me to shut up and get on with it. Well, I had to stand in the trench in front of a steel plate with holes in it through which I had to peer. It was just about daybreak. There was a tree growing about fifty yards off. It had been knocked about pretty badly, but there were plenty of leaves left on it. I stared at it, trying hard to keep awake. But soon the trunk began to quiver, then it wobbled with a wavy motion like a snake. Then the ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt

... affected to despise the world's opinion so completely that he has made himself appear worse than he really was—more profane, more intemperate, more licentious. It is equally true that this tendency, added to the fact that he was a handsome peer, had much to do with the immediate popularity of his poems. There was also a paradoxical vanity, which does not seem easily reconcilable with his misanthropy, that thus led him to reproduce himself in a new dress in his dramas and tales. ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... perchance, were sold at auction with yon aged patriarch of the flock, had now asserted their humanity and would devour him as hospital rations. Meanwhile our shepherd bore a sharp bayonet without a crook, and I felt myself a peer of Ulysses and Rob Roy,—those sheep-stealers of less elevated aims,—when I met in my daily rides these wandering trophies of our ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... neither told me; nor have I had the presumption to ask. But thou, oh spirit! who art the recipient of these sacrificial offerings, must, I expect, unknown though thy surname and name be to me, be a most intelligent and supremely beautiful elder or younger sister, unique among mankind, without a peer even in heaven! As my Master Secundus cannot give vent to the sentiments, which fill his heart, allow me to pray on his behalf! Should thou possess spirituality, and holiness be thy share, do thou often come and look up our Mr. Secundus, for persistently do his thoughts ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... my assistance! Be still: let thy praise of him sink: Peer not, like a seer, at the distance; Wilt fail me on battle-field's brink? Though Cualgne's proud champion, displaying His gambols and pride thou dost see; Full soon shalt thou witness his slaying For price to be ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy

... Stale topics against magistrates and mayors— City and country both thy worth attest. Bid him leave off his shallow Eton wit, More fit to soothe the superficial ear Of drunken Pitt, and that pickpocket Peer, When at their sottish orgies they did sit, Hatching mad counsels from inflated vein, Till England and the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... vainly did Tim poke, and thrash, and peer into the bushes —yet still Shot stood, stiff as a marble statue—then Chase drew up and snuffed about, and pushed his head and forelegs into the matted briers, and thereupon a muzzling noise ensued, and forthwith out he came, mouthing a dead bird, warm still, ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)

... thus conclude I in our vulgare tung: Happely you think—but bootles are your thoughts— That this is fabulously counterfeit, And that we doo as all trageians doo,— To die to-day, for fashioning our scene, The death of Aiax, or some Romaine peer, And, in a minute starting vp againe, Reuiue to please tomorrows audience. No, princes; know I am Hieronimo, The hopeles father of a haples sonne, Whose tung is tun'd to tell his latest tale, Not to excuse grosse errors in the ...
— The Spanish Tragedie • Thomas Kyd



Words linked to "Peer" :   nobleman, UK, successor, fill-in, baronage, Great Britain, Earl Marshal, duke, viscountess, stand-in, viscount, baron, lord, Charles Cornwallis, earl, mortal, gangsta, marquess, coeval, Britain, life peer, person, soul, First Marquess Cornwallis, somebody, contemporary, townsman



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