peer pressure

peer pressure noun: inducement or influence by one's peers.

Noun

peer pressure (usually uncountable, plural peer pressures)

(usually) Inducement or influence by one's peers.
- She vowed to give up drinking during the exam period, but eventually succumbed to peer pressure and was out drinking with her friends within a week of the resolution.
- A successful response uses social forces such as peer pressure and altruism to help people adapt to changing circumstances. It delivers messages and support that promote self-reliance rather than encourage people to fall back on stressed state support.2020 April 9, Ian Boyd, “We practised for a pandemic, but didn’t brace”, in Nature, volume 580, number 7802, page 9

peer pressure (third-person singular simple present peer pressures, present participle peer pressuring, simple past and past participle peer pressured)

(informal, transitive) To induce or influence one's peers.
- He was peer-pressured into taking drugs.

Noun
plural	peer pressures
Verb
third-person singular present	peer pressures
present participle	peer pressuring
past participle	peer pressured
past	peer pressured

From peer + pressure. First use appears c. 1957 in the publications of Ruth Strang.

What does peer pressure mean?: Peer pressure means inducement or influence by one's peers.
What part of speech is peer pressure?: Peer pressure can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of peer pressure?: The plural of peer pressure is peer pressures.

Adapted from Wiktionary: peer pressure (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “peer pressure.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/peer_pressure. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.