To peck means to strike or bite at something quickly with a beak, the way a chicken does when eating grain off the ground or a woodpecker does when drilling into a tree. The motion is sharp and precise: peck, peck, peck. Birds peck to find food, build nests, or defend their territory.

You might see chickens pecking at scattered feed, tapping their beaks rapidly against the ground. A robin pecks at the soil to pull up a worm. Sometimes birds peck at windows, mistaking their own reflection for a rival.

As a noun, a peck is one quick strike with a beak.

The word also describes how people eat or work when they do something in small, repeated bits. If you're not very hungry at dinner, you might just peck at your food, taking tiny bites without much enthusiasm. When someone pecks away at a task, like slowly working through a stack of math problems one at a time, they're making steady progress through small, repeated efforts.