Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. shy, fearful.

1674		Head Canting Academy (2nd edn).
c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Peery c. fearful, shy, sly. The Cull’s Peery, c. the Rogue’s afraid to venture.
1699		N. Ward London Spy XI 263: Another in a Soldiers Habit [...] looked as Peery as if he thought every fresh Man that came in, a Constable.
1725		New Canting Dict. [as cit. c.1698].
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict. [as cit. c.1698].
1741		Canting Academy, or the Pedlar’s-French Dict. 117: To be fearful To be peery.
1751		Fielding Amelia (1926) I 104: You are so shy and peery, you would almost make one suspect there was more in the matter.
1754		Scoundrel’s Dict. 17: Fearful – Peery.

2. (UK Und.) sly.

c.1698		see sense 1.
1725		J. Wild ‘Advice to his Successor’ in Fielding Hist. of Life of J. Wild (1840) xxxv: The world was grown so peery (that was his term for sharp) ‘that ingenious men (meaning thieves) must have recourse to stratagems, or else they could not get bread’.
a.1757		Cibber Refusal III (1777) 49: Sir Gilb. Are you peery, as the cant is? In short do you know what I would be at now? Char. Will you give leave to guess, Sir?
1768		(con. 1710–25) Tyburn Chronicle II in Groom (1999) xxviii: The Cull is Peery The Man is sly.
1786		Whole Art of Thieving [as cit. 1768].
1791		A. Pasquin Shrove Tuesday 72: Their sly projected business was defeated: / Peery Discretion left them in the nick, / And Cunning play’d them a confounded trick.
1804		J. Collins Scripscrapologia 24: An old peery Sharper, deep vers’d in the game, / But whose fingersd with gout, were enfeebled and lame .
1820		‘Pretty Deary’ in Merry Melodist 3: Across her meantime, came a tall Irish beaux, / Who like me in pocket was peery.

3. suspicious.

1719		A. Smith Lives of Most Notorious Highway-men, etc. (1926) 204: [...] They’re so peery, ’tis snitched, i.e., there are a great many people, there’s no good to be done.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1791		A. Pasquin Shrove Tuesday 17: There are those that combat such didactic ills, / And give the precept to the vagrant breeze: / Among the sapient herd of peery wights.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1819		‘One of the Fancy’ Tom Crib’s Memorial to Congress 20: And, fixing his eye on the Porpus’s snout, / Which he knew that Adonis felt peery about.
1846		Swell’s Night Guide 127/2: Peery, suspicious.
1859		Matsell Vocabulum 66: peery Suspicious. ‘The bloke’s peery,’ the man suspects something. ‘There’s a peery, ’tis snitch,’ we are observed, nothing can be done.
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict.
1880		W. Hooe Sharping London 35: Peery, suspicious.
1897		C. Whibley ‘Jonathan Wild’ A Book of Scoundrels 82: ‘People got so peery,’ complained the great man.

4. inquisitive.

1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1859, 1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc.