cuckooing
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]The UK sense is by analogy from the bird's practice of brood parasitism.
Noun
[edit]cuckooing (countable and uncountable, plural cuckooings)
- 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, […]
- (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
[edit]cuckooing
- present participle and gerund of cuckoo
