Definition of "peloton"

For the most part, though, the good stuff did not come in following a break of three riders, nor sitting 20 metres in front of the peloton watching its arrow head glide across the plains of south-west France. It was at the back of the peloton, in the engine room, where things really got interesting. It is a remarkable thing, the peloton. In the distance, or from the aerial shots showing it stretching and contracting, or splitting down the middle to allow it to flow smoothly around a roundabout, the 175 individual cyclists resemble a single unit, a fluid, malleable whole.

2006 July 15, “Tour de France 2006: Life is rarely dull among the bottle-carriers and peloton pushers”, in Alan Rusbridger, editor, The Guardian‎, London: Guardian News & Media, archived from the original on 15 March 2016

The summit of the climb came 38km from the end of stage 14, which began in Limoux and ended in Foix in the foothills of the Pyrenees, and the incident occurred as the peloton emerged into the light and passed under the banner at the top, a quarter of an hour behind a five-man breakaway.

2012 July 15, Richard Williams, “Tour de France 2012: Carpet tacks cannot force Bradley Wiggins off track”, in Alan Rusbridger, editor, The Guardian‎, London: Guardian News & Media, archived from the original on 31 March 2022

And so here, I suppose you intend to make a stand against your followers, Ranald—voto a Dios, as the Spaniard says—a very pretty position—as pretty a position for a small peloton of men as I have seen in my service—no enemy can come towards it by the road without being at the mercy of cannon and musket.

1819, Jedadiah Cleishbotham [pseudonym; Walter Scott], chapter VI, in Tales of My Landlord, Third Series. […], volume IV (A Legend of Montrose), Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], page 135

A regiment of cavalry consists of six squadrons, each squadron of four pelotons, each peloton of two companies, each company of two escouardes, and each escouarde of two men.

1840 November, R[ichard] W[illiam] H[oward] Howard Vyse, “Some Account of the Composition and Force of the Egyptian Army”, in The United Service Journal and Naval and Military Magazine, part III, number 144, London: Henry Colburn, […], page 307

Then the chief of each peloton came forward, snapped fingers with us as we sat on our chairs under the tree, our guards ranged on the right, a mob of gazers—women scratching and boys pulling—on the left, and an open space in front.

1864, Richard F[rancis] Burton, “We Enter Whydah in State”, in A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome. […], volume I, London: Tinsley Brothers, […], page 44

In Bauske, on 2 July, the local commandant had twenty hostages publicly shot at the Memel bridge by a peloton supplied by the local headquarters, allegedly in "reprisal" for the German soldiers who had fallen in the battles for the town.

2000, Margers Vestermanis, “Local Headquarters Liepaja: Two Months of German Occupation in the Summer of 1941”, in Hannes Heer, Klaus Naumann, editors, War of Extermination: The German Military in World War II, 1941–1944 (Studies on War and Genocide; 3), New York, N.Y.: Berghahn Books, published 2009, page 232