cuckooing

Pluralcuckooings

1. 1
   nounUKcountable or uncountable

   A crime in which a criminal gang takes over a vulnerable person's home and uses it as a base for its activities.

   Officers say cuckooing is often used to hide drug dealing in quiet residential streets.

   A housing charity helped him get his flat back after a cuckooing by a local gang.

   Note

   The name borrows the cuckoo's habit of laying its eggs in other birds' nests: the gang settles into a home that is not its own. The word is now formal enough for British legislation, and the Crime and Policing Bill of 2025 names the offenses it typically serves, such as drug, sexual and weapons crimes.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The call made by a cuckoo.

   Far off in the valley, the steady cuckooing of a single bird carried across the fields.

   Hikers often hear cuckooing long before they ever see the bird.

3. 3
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of cuckoo.

   Somewhere beyond the hedge a bird was cuckooing, steady as a clock.

   Detectives accused the gang of cuckooing the homes of elderly residents.

   Note

   The object decides the meaning. With none, it is a bird making its two-note call; with words as its object, it is repeating them over and over; with a home as its object, it is the British crime, as when a gang is accused of cuckooing a flat.

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