mating

1. 1.

   the act of pairing a male and female for reproductive purposes

   “the casual couplings of adolescents”

   “the mating of some species occurs only in the spring”

   Synonymscouplingpairingconjugationunionsexual union

   Broadersexual activity

   Narrowerassortative matingdisassortative matinghybridizationinbreedingservicing

Other forms of mating

plural

matings·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about mating

What does mating mean?

mating means "the act of pairing a male and female for reproductive purposes".

How many syllables are in mating?

mating has 2 syllables: ma-ting. The stress falls on "ma". In IPA it is /ˈmeɪtɪŋ/.

What is another word for mating?

Close synonyms include coupling, pairing, conjugation, union, sexual union. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is mating a common word?

mating is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.