Herding
noun, verb ·2 syllables ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 An act by which individuals are herded.
"These herdings and stabbings and stranglings occurred five hundred years ago, before America felt the withering touch of Europe. Does that exclude them from our concern?"
- 2 A hirsel.
"The whole flock is divided up into seven herdings (the equivalent of the Scottish "hirsels"), and it is through the head shepherd's herding that the only new blood is introduced. Every two or three years some rams are bought at Hawick […]"
- 3 Manipulation of poll results by a polling organization so that they match those produced from other organizations.
"It’s what known in the polling industry as “herding”. And herding, not to put too fine a point on it, is when pollsters cheat. Each polling company knows that however accurate their results are, they will ultimately only be judged on one poll. The final poll before the election."
- 1 present participle and gerund of herd form-of, gerund, participle, present
Example
More examples"My mother was born in the heartland of America, but my father grew up herding goats in Kenya."
Related phrases
More for "herding"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.