verb
1 to look, see: I hid never deeked a cane like it [I had never seen a house like it.] la18-.
2 to listen 19-20.
imperative look out!, take care! 20-.
noun
1 a look at a person or thing from an unobserved position; a deliberate keek: let’s hae a deek at him 19-.
2 one who looks or snoops, a nosey person: Betty the deek 20. Compare dearc. etymology: Romany dic, dico, dik ‘to look, see’, from Hindi dekho, ‘look here, look out’, imperative of dekhna, ‘to see’; perhaps also connected with Scots Gaelic dearc ‘behold, look, observe’; also collected by EMcC/PS; verb sense 2 attested by Galloway Tinkler-Gypsies and also collected by Simson (1865) and by Joseph F G S Lucas from Kirk Yetholm Gypsies; also attested and collected by BS in TDITA, JS, ET, BW, SR and DW in DC note:
Grellmann (1787) collected the forms Dekkna ’To ʃee’, dikkaha ‘I ʃaw’ from Continental gipsies. Smart & Crofton (1875) collected the form dik ‘to see, look’ from English Gypsies.
Sense 1 of the verb is attested by Canadian Paul Pope (2013).
There are also Scots Gaelic deuch, deuchain and Irish déach, déachain forms with the meaning ‘seeing’.