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   poach

   /pəʊtʃ/

   verb

   • 1. illegally hunt or catch (game or fish) on land that is not one's own or in contravention of official protection: "20 tigers are thought to have been poached from national parks" Similar hunt illegallycatch/trap/kill illegallyplunder
   • ▪ take or acquire in an unfair or clandestine way: "employers risk having their newly trained workers poached by other firms" Similar stealappropriatepurloinmisappropriatetakeinformal:nabswipenickpinch
   • ▪ (in ball games) take a shot that a partner or teammate would have expected to take: "in doubles, you're poaching when you advance into your partner's territory"
   • 2. (of an animal) trample or cut up (turf) with its hoofs: "zero-grazing saves the fields from poaching"
   • ▪ (of land) become sodden by being trampled: "if the ground is liable to poach the cows come inside"

   Word Origin early 16th century (in the sense ‘push roughly together’): apparently related to poke1; sense 1 is perhaps partly from French pocher ‘enclose in a bag’ (see poach1).

   Scrabble Points: 12

   • P

     3

   • O

     1

   • A

     1

   • C

     3

   • H

     4

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