poaching
noun, verb
poaching is a noun meaning “Illegal procurement of protected wildlife such as fish, game, logging, or plant collecting” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled P-O-A-C-H-I-N-G and has 2 syllables, and it appears 1.4 times per million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of poaching is poachings.
What does poaching mean?
noun
- 1
Illegal procurement of protected wildlife such as fish, game, logging, or plant collecting.
verb
- 1
present participle and gerund of poach
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce poaching?
Poaching has 2 syllables (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-poaching.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of poaching
- poachings plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is poaching?
Poaching appears 1.4 times per million words in written English, the 23,835th 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).
Poaching in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense trespassing in search of game:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | braconnage |
| German | Wilderei, Wildern, Wilddieberei, Wilddiebstahl, Jagdfrevel, Wildfrevel |
| Portuguese | caça furtiva |
| Spanish | furtivismo, caza furtiva, pesca furtiva, talado furtivo, recolección furtiva, cazata ilegal |
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.