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ministry, in order to ascertain a majority . . . persuaded the queen to create twelve new peers. Smollett. The mildness and precision of their laws ascertained the rule and measure of taxation. Gibbon.

The whole body of barons or peers. The baronage of the kingdom. Bp. Burnet.

Without bread; destitude of food. Plump peers and breadless bards alike are dull. P. Whitehead.

A Scotch errand boy, porter, or messenger. [Written also cady.] Every Scotchman, from the peer to the cadie. Macaulay.

One of the common people; one having no rank of nobility. All below them [the peers] even their children, were commoners, and in the eye law equal to each other. Hallam.

in its present ordinary signification comprises all the people who are under the rank of peers. Blackstone.

An equal; a rival; a compeer. [Obs.] Gerard ever was His full comparative. Beau. & Fl.

taying together; hence, any solemn assembly or council. To council summons all his mighty peers, Within thick clouds and dark tenfold involved, A gloomy consistory. Milton.

The wife of an earl in the British peerage, or of a count in the Continental nobility; also, a lady possessed of the same dignity in her own right. See the Note under Count.

a new form, office, or character; to constitute; to appoint; to make; as, to create one a peer. "I create you companions to our person." Shak.

e act of constituting or investing with a new character; appointment; formation. An Irish peer of recent creation. Landor.

fissure; a rent. The mouse, Behind the moldering wainscot, shrieked, Or from the crevice peered about. Tennyson.

To fight; to scuffle; to box. While the peers cuff to make the rabble sport. Dryden.

ng from one's standing or rank in office or society; diminution; as, the degradation of a peer, a knight, a general, or a bishop. He saw many removes and degradations in all the other offices of which he had been possessed. Clarendon.

rliaments bind not. Blackstone. His language was severely censured by some of his brother peers as derogatory to their other. Macaulay. Derogatory clause in a testament (Law), a sentence of secret character inserted by the testator alone, of which he reserves the knowledge to himself, with a condition that no will he m…

of that which clothes or decorates; as, autumn disrobes the fields of verdure. Two great peers were disrobed of their glory. Sir H. Wotton.

oposed; nonagreement, nonconcurrence, or disagreement. The dissent of no small number [of peers] is frequently recorded. Hallam.

One of the twelve peers of France, companions of Charlemagne in war. [Written also douzepere.] [Obs.] Big-looking like a doughty doucepere. Spenser.

ected, lifted up, built, established, or founded; exaltation of feelings or purposes. Her peerless height my mind to high erection draws up. Sidney

in mathematics, or classics. Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel. Gen. xlix. 4. Then peers grew proud in horsemanship t' excel. Pope.