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Peaked

You look, uh, mahvelous.

Dear Word Detective:  Why do we refer to someone that is ill or not healthy as looking “peaked?” “Peak” means “at the pinnacle.” Seems like “peaked” should mean “to be at one’s best.” How did this meaning come to be? — Garry.

Yo, grasshopper, there is no “should.” There is only “is.” Or “does.” Whatever. Anyway, the universe doesn’t have to explain why it does what it does. That’s why I’ve spent my life cultivating that most un-American of traits, a high tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty. Simply put, the pictures on the menu never look like the food you end up with, so why agonize? Why not just trust the waiter, whose name, I believe he said, is Doug?

But seriously, folks, determining why a counter-intuitive use of language arises is often more difficult than herding cats, and I say that as a board-certified cat herder. (Pro tip: get one of those battery-powered hand vacuums.) In the case of “peaked,” fortunately, there is actually a plausible rationale for why it’s used to mean, as the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines it, “sickly looking.”

The whole saga begins with the noun form of “peak,” which first appeared in the early 16th century. Curiously, “peak” actually arose simply as a variant of the English word “pike,” which dates back to Old English and was formed from roots carrying the general sense of “sharp point” or “pointed object; spear.” In English, “peak” acquired a variety of meanings centering on the idea of “something sharply pointed,” from the “peak” some folks have at the front of their hairline (as in “widow’s peak”) to the pointed top of a mountain. This “mountaintop” sense led to the development of “peak” in a figurative sense meaning “highest point of achievement or success” or “point of greatest amount of measurable flow, etc.” The verb form of “peak” appeared in the late 16th century and has been used to mean both “rise to a peak” (either literally or figuratively) and “to attain maximum intensity or value.”

The adjective “peaked” is based on the noun “peak,” but here things get a little weird, because there are actually two separate “peaked” adjectives in English. The earlier, which appeared concurrently with the noun, means, logically, “rising to or appearing to have a peak,” as one might speak of a “peaked roof” or a “peaked cap.” This “peaked” is usually, at least in the US, pronounced as one syllable (“peekt”).

The other “peaked” didn’t appear until the early 19th century and was originally a regional colloquial term in Britain. The full definition in the OED, to which I alluded earlier, gives a clue to the logic of this “peaked”: “Sharp-featured, thin, pinched, as from illness or undernourishment; sickly looking.” And there’s your answer. We refer to a sickly-looking person as “peaked” because illness frequently causes weight loss and a haggard, wasted appearance resulting in “sharp” (i.e., bony) facial features, making the nose, chin, etc., appear to end in sharp points (“It seemed as if my aunt might have gone on for ever, getting a little dryer and her face more peakit, as the years went by,” 1914). Lack of proper nutrition can, of course, also lead to a “peaked” appearance, so advanced age or serious illness are not prerequisites for being “peaked” (“The children looked peaked and unhealthy,” 1992). In general use, in fact, a person exhibiting nothing more than a sickly demeanor or a bilious aura is also often described as “peaked” (“Bill looked a bit peaked after his third helping of clams”).

So while this “peaked” doesn’t mean that you’re having your best day ever, there are “peaks” involved. Incidentally, this “peaked” is, in the US, frequently pronounced in two distinct syllables (“peek-ed”), which is handy when your pal says “I’m peaked” and you’re not sure whether he means that he’s on top of the world or at death’s door.

8 comments to Peaked

  • I had known this word as “pekid,” meaning to appear unhealthy, but it’s not in Merriam-Webster’s 10th Collegiate Dictionary, and that left me wondering, “Well where did I get that from?” The OneLook Dictionaries website offered only one dictionary listing pekid: Wictionary, which says that the word is an “eye dialect spelling of peaked.” Now I’m even more confused. What is an eye dialect?

  • Vicky Ayers

    Eye dialect is misspelling words to indicate that they are pronounced in an odd way. Like “wudges” to mean “would you”.

  • Earlene Smith

    Peak-ed
    There is an obscure verse in the song “My Darling Clementine” where, after she drowned, her father (the miner, 49-er)
    “soon began to peak and pine”.

    This only verifies what we already know and we know that people also pine away. Just wanted to throw that into the mix.
    Am doubtful of the origins guessed at here as one having reached his peak or pinnacle.

  • Phyllis

    Yes, but why the variant pronunciations ? Does the 2- syllable peaked “ill” derive from the regional English derivation?

  • Tom

    An eye dialect needn’t signal a special pronunciation. It may indicate something else, such as rusticness, as in spelling victuals as vittles even though the outdated word victuals is pronounced exactly the same.

  • Tom Cox

    In Macbeth, Act I, Scene III, the First Witch says, “Shall he dwindle, peak and pine”.

  • No less a literary lighthouse than Tennessee Williams used the two-syllable pronunciation in an obscure poem cast as a blues lyric. I just now stumbled upon this diadem & will perform it, possibly for the first time in human history, at Cameron’s Pub in Half Moon Bay, CA this Thursday night. Stop by if you’re in town!

    Kitchen Door Blues

    My old lady died of a common cold
    She smoked cigars and was 90 years old
    She was thin as paper with the ribs of a kite
    And she flew out the kitchen door one night

    Now I’m no younger’n the old lady was
    When she lost gravitation, and I smoke cigars
    I feel sort of PEAK-ED and I look klnda pore
    So for God’s sake lock that kitchen door!

  • Tamara Cooper

    So, just to clarify: I come from the South. Here, we say, “You look a little peak-ed.” In writing a novel, would it be proper (ha! if I can use that word loosely in this context!) to spell it peak-ed so the reader will know that’s how it’s being used? Thanks!

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