Definition
A unit of dry measure equal to two gallons, or one-quarter of a bushel. In legal contexts, the peck appears primarily in statutes and contracts governing the sale of grain, produce, and other dry commodities, where precise measurement was a matter of commercial obligation and potential liability. A peck contains eight dry quarts.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A verb meaning to strike or pierce with a beak, to pick up food with a beak, or to type slowly by hunting for individual keys. Also used colloquially to mean a quick, light kiss.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The fourth part of a bushel; a dry measure of eight quarts. Also, informally, a great deal or large quantity — as in "a peck of trouble."
The legal and the common definitions here are historically aligned on the measurement sense, but the modern drift of "peck" toward its verb and colloquial uses has nearly displaced the measurement meaning in everyday speech. A researcher encountering "peck" in a historical contract or statute should not assume the verb sense — the measurement meaning was the primary legal usage.
Why It Matters in Research
The peck appears most frequently in historical legal sources: colonial-era statutes regulating weights and measures, agricultural contracts, and mercantile disputes. Researchers working with pre-twentieth-century commercial records, probate inventories, or commodity sale agreements will encounter the peck as a standard unit alongside the bushel, quart, and gallon.
Several traps exist for the unwary. First, the peck as a dry measure must be distinguished from liquid measure — gallons and quarts carried different legal definitions depending on whether the commodity was dry or liquid, and conflating them was a recognized source of commercial fraud. Statutes governing weights and measures often specified "dry measure" explicitly for this reason. Second, the actual physical size of a peck could vary by jurisdiction and era before standardization. English common law inherited a variety of local measures, and colonial American statutes sometimes defined the peck independently of English standards. A "peck" in a seventeenth-century Virginia statute may not be identical to a "peck" in a contemporary English contract.
Third, researchers using the term as a search string in digitized legal corpora should be alert to the verb sense generating false positives, particularly in case law from any era.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) and Bouvier's Law Dictionary are in complete agreement: a peck is a measure of capacity equal to two gallons. Both entries are brief, reflecting that the term required little elaboration in its legal context — it was a measurement unit, not a doctrine. Bouvier cross-references the broader entry on MEASURE, which is the appropriate place to find the governing statutory and common-law framework for weights and measures generally.
Neither dictionary addresses jurisdictional variation in the size of the peck, nor do they engage with the pre-standardization history of the unit. For that context, researchers should consult historical treatises on weights and measures or the relevant statutory records for the jurisdiction in question.
Jurisdictional Note
Before federal and state standardization of weights and measures in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the legal definition of a peck was not uniform across American jurisdictions or between American and English law. Disputes over the precise quantity constituting a peck were litigated in the context of commercial contracts and statutory penalties for short measure. Modern uniform standards have largely resolved these variations, but historical research requires attention to the applicable local statute or custom.