Meaning
The informal hierarchy within a group, in which everyone's rank by power, seniority, or status is tacitly understood. Used of workplaces, schools, professions, industries, and animal groups alike, as in low in the pecking order. Neutral register and extremely common. Neutral, matter-of-fact register with a faintly jokey biological flavor; ubiquitous in workplace commentary. Regional use: General English.
Origin
A calque from German rather than a native English metaphor. The Norwegian zoologist Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe showed in the early 1920s that hens form stable dominance hierarchies enforced by pecking, and because he published in German the original terms were Hackordnung (peck-order) and Hackliste (peck-list), appearing in his 1921-24 papers, including Beitrage zur Sozialpsychologie des Haushuhns (1922). English translated the German compound as 'pecking order', introduced in the late 1920s - Wikipedia gives 1927 and the Online Etymology Dictionary 1928 - first for the hens themselves and soon afterward for human hierarchies, a spread traced in Porter G. Perrin's American Speech study covering 1927-54 (1955). Two fine points are often garbled: the scientist's name is Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe, and the immediate source language was German even though the researcher was Norwegian.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- peck order
- pecking orders
- the pecking order
Usage Examples
- Every kitchen has a pecking order, and the newest cook scrubs the pots.
- New partners spend years climbing the firm's pecking order before they get any real authority.
- On the trading floor the pecking order was settled less by title than by who had made money last quarter.