What's the difference between peck and speck?

Peck


Definition:

  • (n.) The fourth part of a bushel; a dry measure of eight quarts; as, a peck of wheat.
  • (n.) A great deal; a large or excessive quantity.
  • (v.) To strike with the beak; to thrust the beak into; as, a bird pecks a tree.
  • (v.) Hence: To strike, pick, thrust against, or dig into, with a pointed instrument; especially, to strike, pick, etc., with repeated quick movements.
  • (v.) To seize and pick up with the beak, or as with the beak; to bite; to eat; -- often with up.
  • (v.) To make, by striking with the beak or a pointed instrument; as, to peck a hole in a tree.
  • (v. i.) To make strokes with the beak, or with a pointed instrument.
  • (v. i.) To pick up food with the beak; hence, to eat.
  • (n.) A quick, sharp stroke, as with the beak of a bird or a pointed instrument.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The first was a passive avoidance task in which the chicks were allowed to peck at a green training stimulus (a small light-emitting diode, LED) coated in the bitter liquid, methylanthranilate, giving rise to a strong disgust response and consequent avoidance of the green stimulus.
  • (2) The rate of key pecking in a component was negatively related to the proportion of reinforcers from the alternative (variable-time) source.
  • (3) No pigeon attacked the target; one pecked the shockplug on its back.
  • (4) This 'object' function is the summation of the food uptake by one second of pecking and one second of filter feeding.
  • (5) So strong is this image of Peck that his few honourable attempts at comedy, and his less successful portrayals of the baddie, are often forgotten.
  • (6) Hens socially dominant in three bird pens had higher liver fat accumulation than hens lower on the peck order but liver fat accumulation for the dominant hens still averaged less than hens housed either two or one per cage.
  • (7) He tweeted on Wednesday: “I did not pull out of presenting the Rory Peck Awards - they dropped me.” The awards were set up in 1995 in memory of freelance cameraman Rory Peck, who was killed in Moscow in 1993.
  • (8) Pigeons were trained to peck a key on a multi FR30-FI3' schedule.
  • (9) Five pigeons pecked for food reinforcers on a concurrent variable-interval one-minute, variable-interval four-minute schedule.
  • (10) Day-old chicks peck when offered a bright bead; if the bead is coated with the bitter-tasting methylanthranilate (M) they avoid it thereafter.
  • (11) "You also said we haven't ended up with local radio at the bottom of the pecking order.
  • (12) The drug initially produced a marked decrease in aggressive behavior but had little or no effect on key pecking.
  • (13) The results showed that pigeons alternate when frequency-dependent selection is applied to single pecks because alternation is an easy-to-learn stable pattern that satisfies the frequency-dependent condition.
  • (14) At 6ft 3in tall, the lanky Peck was a pillar of moral rectitude standing up for decency and tolerance.
  • (15) The effects of three amphetamine analogs were assessed in pigeons key pecking under a multiple 3-min fixed-interval (FI), 30 response fixed-ratio (FR) schedule of food presentation.
  • (16) Subsequently, over three phases, additions were made during the random-interval 1-minute component as follows: pecks during the component occasionally were punished by timeout presentation (Phase 1), timeouts were presented independently of responding during the component (Phase 2), pecks during the component occasionally were punished by electric-shock presentation (Phase 3).
  • (17) Trade ministers, much lower down the pecking order, are more sanguine.
  • (18) Genetic stock by age and beak treatment by age interactions were present for hen-housed production and egg mass, and the interactions appeared to result primarily from increased mortality from cannibalistic pecking with increased age.
  • (19) In the swinging 1960s, Peck's sober style seemed a little out of place, though he appeared in a couple of flashy Hitchcockian thrillers, Mirage (1965) and Arabesque (1966), and adapted to the new Hollywood as best he could, looking rather bothered as the father of a demon in The Omen (1976).
  • (20) Pigeons' pecks were conditioned with food reinforcement.

Speck


Definition:

  • (n.) The blubber of whales or other marine mammals; also, the fat of the hippopotamus.
  • (n.) A small discolored place in or on anything, or a small place of a color different from that of the main substance; a spot; a stain; a blemish; as, a speck on paper or loth; specks of decay in fruit.
  • (n.) A very small thing; a particle; a mite; as, specks of dust; he has not a speck of money.
  • (n.) A small etheostomoid fish (Ulocentra stigmaea) common in the Eastern United States.
  • (v. t.) To cause the presence of specks upon or in, especially specks regarded as defects or blemishes; to spot; to speckle; as, paper specked by impurities in the water used in its manufacture.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Given how Bank forecasts have been all over the shop, it is possible that the Old Lady's spreadsheet wizards could scupper Mr Carney's plans by spying a speck of price pressure and panicking about it turning into a giant inflationary boulder.
  • (2) 11.21pm GMT Tweets Jeremiah Tittle (@WWWJT) @LengelDavid @Paolo_Bandini @HunterFelt @GdnUSsports remove the wooden beam from your own eye before you remove the speck from the umpires'.
  • (3) Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) died young, had a public career for only 10 years, had no workshop, bequeathed no drawings and left no pupils, and the only places he travelled to outside mainland Italy were the Mediterranean speck of Malta and, briefly, Sicily.
  • (4) Andreas Speck London • David Miranda's detention was an extreme case of a large-scale harassment, especially of Muslims and political activists monitored by MI5.
  • (5) The darting speck of fiery orange had gone, perhaps already on his way to another continent.
  • (6) The smallest speck, fibre and mass sizes visible in the radiographs were 0.24, 0.75 and 0.5 mm, respectively.
  • (7) A qualitative description of electrostatic interactions between the two cytochromes based on limited electrostatic interaction domains on the cytochrome c oxidase surface was found to be in good agreement with all our data and supports the model of Speck et al.
  • (8) The best machines could resolve 0.2 mm aluminium oxide specks with the contact technique.
  • (9) Ulrich Speck is senior fellow at the Transatlantic Academy, Washington DC
  • (10) Speck visibility was as dependent on the composition of the specks and of the surrounding material as on the size of the specks.
  • (11) The Cocos Islands is a tiny green speck in the Indian ocean nearer to Penang than Perth, settled in 1826 as a resupply base for Indian ocean traders.
  • (12) Fairly easy Salads Tabbouleh Most of us visualise tabbouleh as bulgur with specks of herbs, but in the Lebanon it is very green with specks of bulgur.
  • (13) This was the scene in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) in which Lawrence ( Peter O’Toole ) first makes contact with the Arab chieftain Sherif Ali (Sharif), who will become his key ally in the desert fighting, and the latter, in a daringly protracted sequence, develops from a speck on the horizon into a towering, huge horseman, rifle at the ready.
  • (14) (Speck, S.H., Dye, D. and Margoliash, E. (1984) Proc.
  • (15) The area is a busy shipping route connecting to the Strait of Malacca and the Pacific and is believed to have rich oil and gas deposits, meaning that the tiny specks of land that dot it have been contested by many neighbouring powers for decades.
  • (16) Photograph: Penny Bradfield Julia Gillard leaves the press conference Photograph: Penny Bradfield Updated at 10.01am GMT 9.09am GMT Lenore Taylor on a "speck of silver lining for Labor" Guardian Australia’s incoming political editor Lenore Taylor writes for Fairfax media that Labor’s political dysfunction has reached levels unprecedented “even for a party that has spent much of the last three years tearing itself asunder”.
  • (17) We obtained 2-8 fold variations for the smallest sizes of the three objects (specks, fibres and masses) visible in the X-ray images and 3.0-3.7 fold variations for an "image score".
  • (18) Climbing over rough ground, the route follows the rim of a dramatic escarpment above the sea, with wonderful views down to the water, often specked with passing porpoises and dolphins.
  • (19) This consists of multiple echogenic specks in an otherwise normal testicular parenchyma.
  • (20) Interphase nuclei are characterized by the distribution of chromatin; aside from the cortical chromatin spread along nuclear envelope and nucleolus, there are chromatin accumulations that belong mainly in two different classes: 1) numerous chromatin "specks" ranging in size from about 5 to 70 nm and averaging 47 nm; 2) a few roughly circular or elongated chromatin "packets" measuring from 70 to 230 nm.