Skip to main content
PlainSpell

poach

/ˈpoʊt͡ʃ/verb, noun

poach is a verb meaning “To cook (something) in simmering or very hot liquid (usually water; sometimes wine, broth, or otherwise)” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled P-O-A-C-H and has one syllable, and it appears about once in every 2 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).

What does poach mean?

verb

  1. 1

    To cook (something) in simmering or very hot liquid (usually water; sometimes wine, broth, or otherwise).

  2. 2

    To be cooked in such manner.

  3. 3

    To trespass on another's property to take fish or game.

  4. 4

    To take game or fish illegally.

  5. 5

    To take anything illegally or unfairly.

  6. 6

    To intrude; to interfere; to get involved inappropriately, without welcome.

    to poach in foreign academic disciplines

  7. 7

    To entice (an employee or customer) to switch from a competing company to one's own.

  8. 8

    To make soft or muddy by trampling.

    Cattle coming to drink had punched and poached the river bank into a mess of mud.

  9. 9

    To become soft or muddy by being trampled on.

  10. 10

    obsoleteTo stab; to pierce; to spear or drive or plunge into something.

noun

  1. 1

    The act of cooking in simmering liquid.

  2. 2

    The act of taking something unfairly, as in tennis doubles where one player returns a shot that their partner was better placed to return.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce poach?

  • /ˈpoʊt͡ʃ/

Poach has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-poach.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of poach

  • poaches present, singular, he/she/it, plural
  • poaching participle, present
  • poached participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is poach?

Poach appears about once in every 2 million words in written English, the 42,680th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Poach in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchpocher (to cook in simmering liquid), braconner (to take game or fish illegally), débaucher, détourner (to entice an employee or customer to switch)
Germanpochieren (to cook in simmering liquid), wildern (to take game or fish illegally), abwerben (to entice an employee or customer to switch), klauen, stehlen (to take illegally or unfairly)
Portugueseescalfar (to cook in simmering liquid), caçar/pescar furtivamente (to take game or fish illegally)
Spanishescalfar, pochar (to cook in simmering liquid), recolectar furtivamente, talar furtivamente (to take game or fish illegally), pocharse, escalfarse (to be cooked in simmering liquid)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does poach come from?

From Middle English pochen (“to poach (eggs)”), from Old French pocher "to put (egg yolks) in pockets" (i.e. in bags formed by the whites), from Old French poche (“pocket”).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).