Poaching

How to spell poaching

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce poaching

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does poaching mean?

1. nounThe act of cooking food, especially eggs or fish, by simmering it gently in liquid just below boiling point.
2. nounThe illegal hunting, trapping or capturing of wild animals, fish or game on land where one has no right to take them.
3. nounThe practice of luring away a rival's employees or customers.

Poaching in a sentence

• Poaching the salmon in stock keeps the flesh moist and tender.

• Rangers spent the night patrolling the reserve to stop poaching of rhinos.

• The firm accused its competitor of poaching its best engineers with higher salaries.

• She swears by poaching eggs in barely bubbling water for breakfast.

• The estate hired a gamekeeper to deter poaching on the grouse moor.

• Aggressive poaching of clients soured relations between the two agencies.

Where does poaching come from?

Language of origin: French

Poaching is the gerund of the verb poach, which English took from the Old French pochier in the late Middle Ages. That French verb meant to put into a pocket or pouch and was built on poche, the word for a bag or pocket, the same source that gives us the modern 'pouch'. The cookery sense came from the idea of the runny yolk being enclosed, as if pocketed, inside a soft envelope of egg white. The hunting sense grew from the related notion of stuffing stolen game into a bag, so the illegal taker was literally pocketing what was not his to take. Both threads run back to the same homely image of a pocket, which is why a single spelling now covers gently simmering an egg and stealing a landowner's deer; the deceptive part for spellers is simply the 'oa' vowel and the silent shape of the '-ch' before '-ing'.

How the word is built

• poach (from Old French pochier, to pocket or enclose)
• -ing (present participle / verbal noun)