Synonyms

poaching

American

[poh-ching] / ˈpoʊ tʃɪŋ /

noun

the illegal practice of trespassing on another's property to hunt or steal game without the landowner's permission.
any encroachment on another's property, rights, ideas, or the like.

Other Word Forms

antipoaching adjective

Etymology

Origin of poaching

First recorded in 1605–15; poach ² + -ing ¹

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

The group earlier this year said that Bartolomeo Rongone would take over this month as chief executive, poaching him from Kering-owned luxury house Bottega Veneta.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 21, 2026

Zuckerberg embarked on a major recruitment campaign last year to acquire talent for the Meta's efforts, poaching Scale AI co-founder Alexandr Wang and putting him in charge of a newly formed unit called Superintelligence Labs.

From Barron's • Apr. 8, 2026

At home, however, poaching islands of meringue has always felt like too much messy work.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 27, 2026

Meta has also struggled to establish itself as a top AI player compared to competitors such as Google, Anthropic and OpenAI, despite aggressively poaching top talent to form Meta Superintelligence Labs last summer.

From MarketWatch • Mar. 26, 2026

Then he set about turning the poaching of salmon into a business.

From "The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics" by Daniel James Brown

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023