Word.ws English Dictionary

pig butchering

pig butchering noun: a scam technique in which victims are tricked into investing large amounts of money into a fictitious brokerage (usually a cryptocurrency wallet), which actually sends their funds directly to the scammers. Also the present participle and gerund of pig butcher.

Noun

pig butchering (uncountable)

  1. A scam technique in which victims are tricked into investing large amounts of money into a fictitious brokerage (usually a cryptocurrency wallet), which actually sends their funds directly to the scammers.
    • According to news reports, pig-butchering scams started in China in 2016. Back then, scammers groomed their victims to place bets on fake gambling websites.2022 February 20, Wong Shiying, “The pig-butchering scam: Con artists who come for your heart and wallet”, in The Straits Times
    • Intense efforts were also made to crack down on four types of high-incidence network fraud cases, namely, network loans, network click farming, pig-butchering scams and pretending as customer service personnel.2022, China Internet Development Report 2020, page 157
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see pig, butchering.

Also used as

pig butchering is also the present participle and gerund of pig butcher.

Origin of pig butchering

Calque from Mandarin 殺豬盤／杀猪盘 (shāzhūpán, “pig-butchering plate”).

Words formed from pig butchering

Questions about pig butchering

What does pig butchering mean?
Pig butchering means a scam technique in which victims are tricked into investing large amounts of money into a fictitious brokerage (usually a cryptocurrency wallet), which actually sends their funds directly to the scammers.
What part of speech is pig butchering?
Pig butchering is a noun.

Words near pig butchering in the dictionary

  1. pig board
  2. pig boards
  3. pig bucket
  4. pig butcher
  5. pig butchered
  6. pig butchering
  7. pig butchers
  8. pig dog
  9. pig dogged
  10. pig dogging
  11. pig dogs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pig butchering (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: “pig butchering.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pig_butchering. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.