pecking order
noun
variants
or less commonly peck order
1
: the basic pattern of social organization within a flock of poultry in which each bird pecks another lower in the scale without fear of retaliation and submits to pecking by one of higher rank
broadly
: a dominance hierarchy in a group of social animals
2
: a social hierarchy
Examples of pecking order in a Sentence
As an assistant manager, he was pretty low in the company's pecking order.
the pecking order of Washington politics
Recent Examples on the Web
Four gold medals in five Games – including a three-peat from 2004 to 2012 – cemented the US at the top of the pecking order in the women’s competition.
—
Ben Morse, CNN, 31 July 2024
Qin Haiyang slips down pecking order 01:13 A day earlier, Zhang Yufei, a silver medalist in the women’s 100-meter butterfly in Tokyo in 2021, won bronze in the same event in Paris.
—NBC News, 30 July 2024
Neville indicated that the traditional framework will be applied with respect to protecting teams from getting jumped in the pecking order: Bowls can pass over one team for another as long as there is no more than a one-game difference in record.
—Jon Wilner, The Mercury News, 18 July 2024
And the Hotline reported on Thursday that overall record, not conference record, would determine the pecking order for selections.
—Jon Wilner, The Mercury News, 19 July 2024
See all Example Sentences for pecking order 
Ben Morse, CNN, 31 July 2024
Qin Haiyang slips down pecking order 01:13 A day earlier, Zhang Yufei, a silver medalist in the women’s 100-meter butterfly in Tokyo in 2021, won bronze in the same event in Paris.
—NBC News, 30 July 2024
Neville indicated that the traditional framework will be applied with respect to protecting teams from getting jumped in the pecking order: Bowls can pass over one team for another as long as there is no more than a one-game difference in record.
—Jon Wilner, The Mercury News, 18 July 2024
And the Hotline reported on Thursday that overall record, not conference record, would determine the pecking order for selections.
—Jon Wilner, The Mercury News, 19 July 2024
See all Example Sentences for pecking order
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Cite this Entry
“Pecking order.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pecking%20order. Accessed 19 Aug. 2024.
Copy CitationMedical Definition
pecking order
noun
peck·ing order
ˈpek-iŋ-ˌ 
variants
also peck order
: the basic pattern of social organization within a flock of poultry in which each bird pecks another lower in the scale without fear of retaliation and submits to pecking by one of higher rank compare cannibalism sense 3, dominance sense a
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