Word.ws English Dictionary

peter

Syllables: pe·terUK/ˈpiːtə//ˈpitɚ/

peter noun: the penis.

Noun (1)

peter (plural peters)

  1. (slang) The penis.
    • You smile, act polite, shake their hands, then cut off their peters and put them in your pocket.” “Yes, Mr. President,” answered O'Brien.1997, Shelby Scates, Warren G. Magnuson and the Shaping of Twentieth-Century America, page 141
    • ... and you were there, and they acted like you weren't even born yet?' "I'd say, 'Yes, their memories are as long as their peters.'"1998, Michael Robert Gorman, The Empress Is a Man: Stories from the Life of Jose Sarria, page 199

Noun (2)

peter (plural peters)

  1. (UK, slang) A safe.
    • It used to be simple to 'crack a peter'. Safe-breaking (blowing or cracking a 'peter') in the past three or four years shows that the expert cracksman knows his job.1963, Kenneth Ullyett, Crime out of Hand, page 109
    • The forty quid! Gone! ’Ow could she ’ave gotten in there? The peter ain’t broke, no sign of it bein’ bettied, and I the only one w’ the key.2013, Zack Wentz, “Simplicity itself”, in Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, volume 10, page 161
    Synonyms:
    pete
  2. (UK, slang) A prison cell.
    • […] the ceremony of 'slopping out', breakfast, across to the main library from nine till half-past eleven, back to my peter for the mid-day meal and two hours' break, then the library again till five o'clock when tea was brought round and the cell door locked for the night.1955, Rupert Croft-Cooke, The Verdict of You All, page 82

Verb (1)

peter (third-person singular simple present peters, present participle petering, simple past and past participle petered)

  1. (intransitive) Chiefly followed by out: originally (mining), of a vein of ore: to be depleted of ore; now (generally), to diminish to nothing; to dwindle, to trail off.
    • I found a veinlet about 15 in. wide and very rich in gold. Trenching along its outcrop showed that it extended about 100 ft. and then pinched out altogether. A winze sunk on the veinlet showed that it "petered out" entirely at 25 or 30 ft.1910 T. Lane Carter: Mining in Nicaragua. Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers. Vol. XLI. 1910. Canal Zone Meeting, October, 1910
    • Mersey Street is particularly attractive. Running up from the bay, it passes between terraced cottages before petering into a footpath that leads over the headland to a golf course and the dune-backed sands of Black Rock.1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 73

Verb (2)

peter (third-person singular simple present peters, present participle petering, simple past and past participle petered)

  1. (intransitive) Synonym of blue peter; to call for trump by throwing away a high card while holding a lower one.
    Synonyms:
    blue peter

Noun (3) capitalized: Peter

Peter

  1. (World War II era, joint US/RAF) radiotelephony clear-code word for the letter P.
    Synonyms:
    Papa

Proper noun capitalized: Peter

Peter (countable and uncountable, plural Peters)

  1. A male given name from Ancient Greek.
    • She knew of no Peter, and yet he was here and there in John and Michael's minds, while Wendy's began to be scrawled all over with him. The name stood out in bolder letters than any of the other words, and as Mrs Darling gazed she felt that it had an oddly cocky appearance.1911, J. M. Barrie, chapter I, in Peter Pan, Wordsworth Editions Ltd, published 1993
    • What splendid names for boys there are! / There's Carol like a rolling car, / And Martin like a flying bird, / And Adam like the Lord's First Word, / And Raymond like the Harvest Moon, / And Peter like a piper's tune,1933, Eleanor Farjeon, “Boys' Names”, in Over the Garden Wall, Faber and Faber, page 90
  2. The leading Apostle in the New Testament: Saint Peter.
  3. The epistles of Peter in the New Testament of the Bible, 1 Peter and 2 Peter attributed to St. Peter.
    Synonyms:
    Pet.
  4. A surname originating as a patronymic.
  5. A census-designated place in Cache County, Utah, United States, named after Peter Maughan.
    Synonyms:
    Petersboro

peter meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

peter in Hindi

पीटर

peter in Tamil

பீட்டர்

peter in Marathi

पीटर, पिटर, पीटरला

peter in Urdu

بتدریج گھٹنا
More languagesFewer languages
peter in Bengali
পিটার, পিটারের কাছে, পিটারকে
peter in Telugu
పీటర్, పేతురు, పీటర్కు
peter in Malayalam
പീറ്റർ, പീറ്ററിലേക്ക്, പീറ്റർക്ക്
peter in Kannada
ಸಣ್ಣದಾಗು, ಚಿಕ್ಕದಾಗು, ಕುಂದು
peter in Punjabi
ਪੀਟਰ, ਪੀਟਰਿੰਗ
peter in Gujarati
પીટર, પિટર, પીટરને
peter in Odia
ପିଟର, ପିଟର୍, ପିଟରଙ୍କ ପ୍ରତି
peter in Nepali
पिटर, पीटर, पिटरिं
peter in Indonesian
kontol

Examples of peter in a sentence

  • “It's to put on their peters when they don't want to make babies,” she said.2002, Celia H Miles, Mattie's Girl: An Appalachian Childhood, page 64:
  • Whitney is absorbed especially by Dublin's unglamorous interstitial zones: the new housing estates and labyrinths of roads, watercourses and railways where the city peters into its commuter belt.2014 August 23, Neil Hegarty, “Hidden City: Adventures and Explorations in Dublin by Karl Whitney, review: ‘a necessary corrective’ [print...

All 40 example sentences with peter

Synonyms of peter

Forms of peter

Noun
pluralpeters
Verb
third-person singular presentpeters
present participlepetering
past participlepetered
pastpetered
Proper noun
pluralPeters

Past tense of peter: petered

Origin of peter

US, 1902, presumably from shared initial pe-. Compare the use of other men’s names as slang terms for the penis, e.g., dick, willy, johnson, John Thomas, etc.

Unknown. Attested from the 18th century. The Canting Academy defines peeter as “A portmantle”; Green’s Dictionary of Slang list a variety of uses for peter – including trunk or portmanteau – in thieves’ cant in Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. The OED suggests that it may be related to St. Peter being the holder of the keys to God's Kingdom.

Unknown; the following etymologies have been suggested: * From peter (“to stop (doing or saying something)”) (slang, obsolete, rare). * Since the word was first used in mining contexts, either: ** from French péter (“to explode; to break wind, fart”) (slang), from pet (“emission of digestive gases from the anus, flatus, fart”) (slang), from Latin pēditum (“flatus, fart”), from pēdō (“to break wind, fart”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *pesd- (“to break wind softly”), probably imitative; or ** from (salt)peter, a variant of saltpetre (“potassium nitrate”) (the key ingredient in gunpowder), from Middle English salpeter, salpetre [and other forms] with the first element influenced by salt, from Old French salpetre (modern French salpêtre), from Medieval Latin salpetra, from Latin sāl petrae (literally “salt of stone”) (as potassium nitrate occurs encrusted on some stones), from sāl (“salt”) + petrae (the nominative or vocative plural of petra (“rock; stone”), from Ancient Greek πέτρᾱ (pétrā, “rock formation; stone”)).

Words formed from peter

Phrases with peter

13 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with peter

7 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about peter

What does peter mean?
Peter means the penis.
What is peter in Hindi?
Peter in Hindi is पीटर. See Peter meaning in Hindi.
How do you use peter in a sentence?
“It's to put on their peters when they don't want to make babies,” she said.
What part of speech is peter?
Peter can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce peter?
Peter is pronounced /ˈpiːtə/ (UK).
What is the plural of peter?
The plural of peter is peters.

Words near peter in the dictionary

  1. petechiations
  2. petechioid
  3. petedunnite
  4. peteman
  5. petemen
  6. peter
  7. Peter Funk
  8. Peter Funks
  9. Peter Grievous
  10. Peter Griffin
  11. Peter Griffins

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: peter (page history and authors); Peter (page history and authors); peter (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); peter (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); peter (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); peter (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); peter (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); peter (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); peter (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); peter (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); peter (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); peter (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); peter (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); peter (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-peter.ogg, en-us-Peter.ogg.

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