Word.ws English Dictionary

peacocking

Syllables: pea·cock·ingUK/ˈpiːkɒkɪŋ//ˈpikɑkɪŋ/

peacocking noun: ostentatious dress or behaviour employed by a man in an attempt to impress women.

Noun

peacocking (uncountable)

  1. Ostentatious dress or behaviour employed by a man in an attempt to impress women.
    • Peacocking may take place in legislatures and lodges, churches and chain stores. But it is particularly evident and bizarre in academia, a world where everyone is supposed to produce logically ordered exchanges of ideas.1997, Emily Toth, Ms. Mentor's impeccable advice for women in academia, University of Pennsylvania Press, page 66
    • Men do it to get attention from women. Peacocking in pickup circles is pretty much a given. It's not for everyone and if you do decide to do it, you have to fully commit to it.2010, Dag Albright, How to Meet and Pick Up Women, Leisure Crest International, →ISBN, page 85

Origin of peacocking

From peacock + -ing.

Questions about peacocking

What does peacocking mean?
Peacocking means ostentatious dress or behaviour employed by a man in an attempt to impress women.
What part of speech is peacocking?
Peacocking is a noun.
How do you pronounce peacocking?
Peacocking is pronounced /ˈpikɑkɪŋ/ (US).

Words near peacocking in the dictionary

  1. peacocked
  2. peacockeries
  3. peacockery
  4. Peacockian
  5. peacockiest
  6. peacocking
  7. peacockish
  8. peacockishly
  9. peacockishness
  10. peacockism
  11. peacocklike

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: peacocking (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-peacocking.oga.

Cite this entry: “peacocking.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/peacocking. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.