cheeko pek
- noun
- Offensive
- His friends teased him for acting like a cheeko pek during the haunted house tour.
Examples
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If you keep being a cheeko pek, you'll miss out on all the fun.
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Don't be such a cheeko pek when it's your turn to speak.
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Don't be such a cheeko pek!
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Why are you acting like a cheeko pek?
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His friends teased him for acting like a cheeko pek during the haunted house tour.
-
If you keep being a cheeko pek, you'll miss out on all the fun.
-
Don't be such a cheeko pek when it's your turn to speak.
Synonyms
A person who is too afraid to face danger or hard things
A person who is easily frightened and not brave
A person who is too afraid to try things
Antonyms
How Brave
Surface Forms
Morphology
cheeko + pek
Neither 'cheeko' nor 'pek' is attested or given a literal meaning in the input, so there is no compositional or semantic clue a B1 learner could use to infer 'cowardly or overly cautious'. The form appears to be slang/nonce and language-specific rather than built from transparent English morphemes, making the expression unpredictable and idiomatic to learners.
Etymology
The noun cheeko pek may come from the image of a tiny bird: cheeko sounds like the bird's call and pek shows the quick peck and hiding the bird does when it is scared. That's why people call someone a cheeko pek to mean 'a cowardly or overly cautious person'.