Note 68 — Chapter XV · CAUSES OF CHANGE—continued

The NED has not arrived at this explanation; it says: “Peer is not a phonetic development of pire, and cannot, so far as is at present known, be formally identified with that word”; “the verbs keek, peek, and peep are app. closely allied to each other. Kike and pike, as earlier forms of keek and peek, occur in Chaucer; pepe, peep is of later appearance.... The phonetic relations between the forms pike, peek, peak, are as yet unexplained.”