unpeer

English

Etymology

From un- +‎ peer.

Verb

unpeer (third-person singular simple present unpeers, present participle unpeering, simple past and past participle unpeered)

1. (rare, historical, transitive) To remove from peerage; relinquish one's peerdom.
   • 1763, The Parliamentary Or Constitutional History of England:

     […] to destroy the king and parliament; disinherit his royal posterity; unpeer all the lords, and level them with the dust; […]

   • 1829, The Parliamentary Debates from the Year 1803 to the Present Time:

     […] not that he thought it a degradation for peers to sit in the House of Commons, but it was a degradation to the peers of Scotland to give them liberty to unpeer themselves, and to descend from the order to which they belonged.

   • 1906, The Atlantic Monthly, volume 98, page 793:

     When the Earl of Selborne died, who as Sir Roundell Palmer had been made Lord Chancellor, his son, a prominent M.P., declared he would not go to the Upper House, that he would unpeer himself.