Peorð
is the rune denoting the sound p in the Elder Futhark runic alphabet. It does not appear in the Younger Futhark. It is named peorð in the Anglo-Saxon rune-poem and glossed as follows:
No word similar to peorð is known in Old English. According to a 9th-century manuscript, the letter of the Gothic alphabet Image:Gothic_Letter_Pairthra.svg|14px|? p is called "pertra." As this name is reconstructed to *pairþra, it could be related to peorð, but its meaning is similarly unknown.
The Common Germanic name could be referring to a pear-tree.
Based on the context of "recreation and amusement" given in the rune poem, a common speculative interpretation is that the intended meaning is "pear-wood" as the material of either a woodwind instrument, or a "game box" or game pieces made from wood.
From peorð, Proto-Germanic form *perðu, *perþō or *perþaz may be reconstructed on purely phonological grounds. The expected Proto-Germanic term for "pear tree" would be *pera-trewô.
The Ogham letter name Ceirt, glossed as "apple tree", may in turn be a loan from Germanic into Primitive Irish.
The earliest attestation of the rune is in the Kylver Stone futhark row. The earliest example in a linguistic context is already in futhorc, in the Kent II, III and IV coin inscriptions, dated to ca. AD 700. On St. Cuthbert's coffin, a p rune takes the place of Greek Ρ. The Westeremden yew-stick has op hæmu "at home" and up duna "on the hill".
Looijenga speculates that the p rune arose as a variant of the b rune, parallel to the secondary nature of Ogham peith. The uncertainty surrounding the rune is a consequence of the rarity of the *p phoneme in Proto-Germanic.
The rune is discontinued in Younger Futhark, which expresses /p/ with the b rune, for example on the Viking Age Skarpåker Stone,