(pēˈpĭng)
noun A person who gets pleasure, especially sexual pleasure, from secretly watching others; a voyeur.
Word History: In an age when we can speak of
peeping Tom cameras or
electronic peeping Toms we have indeed come far from the time of the legendary peeping Tom. Godgifu (fl. 1040-1080), Lady Godiva to us, pledged her legendary ride as a means of persuading her husband, Leofric, Earl of Mercia, to lower taxes. In the original version of the story she was observed by all the townspeople as she disrobed, but in a much later version of the story a tailor or butcher named Tom was the only person to observe her as she rode by, everyone else having shuttered their windows as they had been asked.
Peeping Tom, first recorded around 1796, has become a term for a voyeur, not at all a pleasant fate for this legendary fellow. As W.H. Auden has said,
“Peeping Toms/are never praised, like novelists or bird watchers,/for their keenness of observation.”