poacher

UK/ˈpəʊ.tʃə/US/ˈpoʊ.t͡ʃɚ/

nounC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,552 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: poachers

A poacher is somebody who hunts on land where they have no right. Caught the poacher, poachers at night, an ivory poacher.

Historically it was often a hungry villager taking a rabbit from an estate, and the penalties were savage out of all proportion. Modern wildlife poaching is organised and drives species towards extinction. A poacher turned gamekeeper is somebody now enforcing rules they once broke.

Definitions of poacher

1nounpoacherSomebody who hunts on land where they have no right.C1
“Game wardens caught a poacher setting traps for deer on the estate.”

poacher is an illegal hunter.

Where it comes from

Old French
pocher
Middle English
pochen — to poach (eggs)
English
poach
English, today
poacher

From poach + -er. poach comes 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”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Word Building

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poacher in the wild

Koose Munisamy Veerappan was an Indian poacher, smuggler, domestic terrorist and bandit who was active for 36 years, and kidnapped major politicians for ransom.
Veerappan
USS Sea Poacher, a Balao-class submarine, was a vessel of the United States Navy named for the sea poacher, a slender, mailed fish of the North Atlantic.
USS Sea Poacher
The northern spearnose poacher is sometimes used as a public aquarium fish.
Northern spearnose poacher

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the pocher family

poacher poach

poacher — used about once every 6,499 pages · #10,552 · point at the bar for the others

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