peck [LME] This is probably a dialect variant of pick (see pike). In the 1920s researchers in animal behaviour observed that hens have a social hierarchy in which some within the flock are able to attack or threaten others without retaliation. This is the pecking order, soon recognized in other animal groups and also in human society. It is a translation of the original German term Hackordnung. The origin of keep your pecker up, ‘stay cheerful’, is unrelated to the slang use of pecker for the penis (E20th from the USA). It has been around since the 1850s, and is even used by Charles Dickens in a letter in 1857. It most probably comes from the comparison of a bird’s beak to a person’s nose, and is thus much the same idea as ‘chin up’.