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pecking order
noun
- Animal Behavior. a dominance hierarchy, seen especially in domestic poultry, that is maintained by one bird pecking another of lower status.
- a sequence or hierarchy of authority in an organization or social group.
pecking order
noun
- Also calledpeck order a natural hierarchy in a group of gregarious birds, such as domestic fowl
- any hierarchical order, as among people in a particular group
pecking order
- A hierarchy within a social group or community, in which those members at the top assume positions of leadership, authority, and power. The expression originated from a description of social behavior among chickens, which attack each other by pecking to establish dominance.
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Word History and Origins
Origin of pecking order1
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Idioms and Phrases
The hierarchy of authority in a group, as in On a space mission, the astronauts have a definite pecking order . This expression, invented in the 1920s by biologists who discovered that domestic poultry maintain such a hierarchy with one bird pecking another of lower status, was transferred to human behavior in the 1950s.Discover More
Example Sentences
The pecking order of democracy is reduced to this: When the president wants to go, he gets to go.
During any other month, that news alone would have signaled a new world order, an upheaval in the pecking order.
That parsing of the pecking order, though, didn't extend to his personal life or interactions with colleagues.
Without the informal pecking order, sociopaths have free room to maneuver.
Romney has already gone the extra mile to position himself below Netanyahu in the murky pecking order of US-Israeli relations.
They hadn't any organization, or any place to maintain on an organizational pecking-order.
They have a simple me-stronger pecking order so I pecked a bit and we can drink.
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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