![]() If you’re having trouble setting them apart, just remember that “peek” is spelled almost like its closest cousin, “peep.” By giving someone a “sneak peek,” you’re indulging the peeping Tom in him. Everest” (probably never going to happen, with my injured foot). The word “peak,” on the other hand, refers to the tip of the mountain or the highest level of anything, such as “The peak of my writing career will be when I get the Nobel Prize for Literature,” which is the peak of delusion, really, similar to my ambition of climbing “the peak of Mt. ![]() ![]() If we’re referring to a preview of something that hasn’t gone public yet, the correct term is “sneak peek,” where the word “peek” means “a quick glance.” (Thanks, .) So when we’re telling someone to “Take a peek of the Ralph Lauren spring collection,” we’re actually offering a “sneak peek” of a line that hasn’t been launched officially. Hopefully next time, one of the professional communicators on the Romney team will sneak a peek at a dictionary before embarrassing the candidate and themselves.I’ve been using the term regularly in the last six months, and I admit, because “peak” and “peek” sound the same, one can easily get them mixed up.Įven your regular public relations person, who should have made an extra effort to spell-check, didn’t get it right when he sent me an invite today saying, “Witness the power of the Mouth as five fun personalities give you a sneak peak on what their mouths can do!”īefore we all get piqued by this misuse, let’s get it straight, shall we? Meaning, pronunciation, picture, example sentences, grammar, usage notes, synonyms and more. Merriam-Webster’s and American Heritage agree. And because hyphenation rules don’t apply to noun phrases, this takes no hyphen. Instead, “sneak peek” is a combo you form yourself with two distinct words. 2 0 The series gives you a sneak peek behind the scenes of what happens at wedding shops and salons during your appointment and fittings. However the meaning of Sneak Peek stated above is reliable and authentic. ![]() Webster’s New World doesn’t have a listing for “sneak peek” or “sneak-peek,” which means there is no such hyphenated word. sneak-peek Meanings Sentences A sneak peek of the commercial can be viewed at the Nationwide web site on January 29, before it airs during the Super Bowl on February 4. There is more than 1 meaning of each word. So did the Romney team confirm their hyphen in “sneak-peak”?Ĭonsidering they got peek wrong, it won’t surprise you that they were none too meticulous in researching that hyphen, either. No formula will help you figure out which. Two out of three are hyphenated, but one isn’t. The person doing the water-skiing is a water-skier. My favorite example: type “water ski” into Webster’s New World College Dictionary online at and you’ll see that the piece of equipment is called a water ski, but the verb is water-ski. That’s because no one ever tells us that the answer is right at our fingertips, no farther than your nearest dictionary or dictionary site. We may never know, but the one thing we can be sure of is that a lot of people – even people who know how to hyphenate compound modifiers like “smooth-running” or “well-paying” – have no idea when to put a hyphen in terms functioning as nouns or verbs. Even if they had gotten the peek part right, why did they think it contained a hyphen? T Make sure you sneak a little bit of protein into your snacks. Recently, I and about six million other schadenfreude-fueled bloggers snickered at the Mitt Romney camp’s publishing a Facebook promo with the term “sneak-peak” instead of “sneak peek.” I warn careful writers about this peak-vs.-peek danger a lot, so the campaign’s error was a good reminder that, unless you’re talking about stolen hallucinogenic drugs, the thing you’re sneaking is probably a “peek.”īut another interesting fact about the typo got less attention is that hyphen. us / snik / past tense and past participle sneaked or snuck us / snk / to go or do something secretly, or take someone or something somewhere secretly: I always + adv/prep He sneaked out of the house, going out through the back way. ![]()
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