Peel means to remove the outer covering or skin from something. When you peel an orange, you strip away the thick rind to reach the juicy fruit inside. When you peel a banana, you pull back its yellow skin. Potatoes, carrots, and apples all have peels you can remove before cooking or eating them.

The outer layer itself is also called a peel. Banana peels are famously slippery, which is why cartoons love showing characters stepping on them and tumbling. Orange peels contain oils that smell wonderful and can be used in cooking.

Things besides fruit can peel too. After a sunburn, your skin might peel as the damaged outer layer flakes off. Old paint peels from a wall when it loses its grip and curls up in strips. When you peel a sticker off a notebook, you're carefully separating it from the surface.

You might also peel away from a group, meaning you break off and head in a different direction. If three friends walk together and then one peels off to go home, they've separated from the group to take their own path.