kettling
kettling noun: a crowd control technique, used by police, where a hostile group of protesters or rioters are surrounded and not allowed to disperse, sometimes with the use of temporary fencing to corral and isolate portions of the group. Also the present participle and gerund of kettle.
Noun
kettling (usually uncountable, plural kettlings)
- A crowd control technique, used by police, where a hostile group of protesters or rioters are surrounded and not allowed to disperse, sometimes with the use of temporary fencing to corral and isolate portions of the group.
- These are our young, screaming out in need, meriting not kettling and reprimands, but job prospects and dignity.2011 October 12, Gregory Djerejian, “This Ain't No Tea Party: A Conservative Defense of Occupy Wall Street”, in The Atlantic
- The situation where water gets trapped in the heat exchanger of a boiler (e.g. due to limescale build-up), resulting in knocking sounds as it turns into expanding steam.
Also used as
kettling is also the present participle and gerund of kettle.
Forms of kettling
| plural | kettlings |
|---|
Questions about kettling
- What does kettling mean?
- Kettling means a crowd control technique, used by police, where a hostile group of protesters or rioters are surrounded and not allowed to disperse, sometimes with the use of temporary fencing to corral and isolate portions of the group.
- What part of speech is kettling?
- Kettling is a noun.
- What is the plural of kettling?
- The plural of kettling is kettlings.
Words near kettling in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: kettling (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “kettling.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kettling. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.