Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

cuckooing

Word Rarity Very rare

Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English

Syllables: cuck-oo-ing
IPA

18

Scrabble Score

9

Letters

3

Syllables

7

Unique Chars

Meaning

noun

The call of a cuckoo.

Countable; Uncountable

noun

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.

British usage; Countable; Uncountable

verb

present participle and gerund of cuckoo

Example Sentences

"[…] 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, […]"
"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."

Etymology

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

Usage

Inflected Forms

cuckooings (plural)

Questions

What does cuckooing mean?: The call of a cuckoo.
Where does cuckooing come from?: The UK sense is by analogy from the bird's practice of brood parasitism.

How to pronounce cuckooing

Open the pronunciation page — Open the Speakur entry for “cuckooing”.
Read the phonetic spelling — Read the IPA spelling () so you know which sounds to aim for.
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