Cuckooing
noun, verb
noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 The call of a cuckoo. countable, uncountable
"[…] 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 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. UK, countable, uncountable
"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 present participle and gerund of cuckoo form-of, gerund, participle, present
Example
More examples"[…] 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, […]"
Etymology
The UK sense is by analogy from the bird's practice of brood parasitism.
More for "cuckooing"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.