cuckooing

English

Etymology

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

Noun

cuckooing (countable and uncountable, plural cuckooings)

  1. The call of a cuckoo.
    • 1882, The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal:
      […] 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) 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.
    • 2025 February 25, “Crime and Policing Bill: Child criminal exploitation and 'cuckooing' factsheet”, in Home Office, Ministry of Justice (United Kingdom)‎[1]:
      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

cuckooing

  1. present participle and gerund of cuckoo

Translations

Further reading

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