cuckooing

Valid in Scrabble

Scrabble points
18
Words With Friends
23
Letters
9

Definition of cuckooing

3 senses · 2 parts of speech · etymology included

noun

  1. (countable, uncountable)The call of a cuckoo.
    “[…] the mistaken idea that wagtails and hedge-warblers feed the young cuckoos they bring up, long after they leave the nest, whenever they hear their cuckooing, […]”
See all 3 definitions

noun

  1. (countable, uncountable)The call of a cuckoo.
    “[…] the mistaken idea that wagtails and hedge-warblers feed the young cuckoos they bring up, long after they leave the nest, whenever they hear their cuckooing, […]”
  2. (UK, countable, uncountable)A form of crime in which the home of a vulnerable person is taken over by a criminal gang and used as a base for their activities.
    “The specified criminal activity includes the types of criminal activity that cuckooing is typically used to facilitate, for example, drugs offences, sexual offences and offensive weapons offences.”

verb

  1. (form-of, gerund, participle, present)present participle and gerund of cuckoo

Definitions from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA.

Etymology

The UK sense is by analogy from the bird's practice of brood parasitism.

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