fracking

See also: Fracking

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈfɹækɪŋ/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Audio (Southern England):

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Etymology 1

From frack (“fracture”) +‎ -ing.

Alternative forms

• fraccing, fracing

Noun

fracking (usually uncountable, plural frackings)

1. (oil industry) Hydraulic fracturing.
   • 2010 July 25, Andrew Chung, “Quebec between a rock and a hard place on gas from shale”, in Toronto Star, retrieved 26 July 2010:

     Still, environmentalists look to the U.S., where drilling with fracking is now a “megatrend” and where thousands of wells dot the landscape in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Colorado. They worry about higher greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional natural gas—because of the energy used to get the gas—and water contamination.

   • 2014 November 9, Stanley Reed, “Britain Plans for Future of Shale Oil and Gas Industry”, in The New York Times‎^[1], →ISSN:

     There is strong resistance in much of Europe to fracking, the practice of forcing liquid and sand into wells to release trapped oil and gas. France has a ban on fracking, Germany has imposed a moratorium, and opposition has cropped up and sometimes delayed shale exploration in Eastern European countries like Romania and Poland.

   • 2018 August 30, Bethany McLean, “How America's ‘most reckless’ billionaire created the fracking boom”, in The Guardian‎^[2]:

     The fracking boom has been fuelled mostly by overheated investment capital, not by cash flow.

   • 2019 November 3, Robin McKie, “Shale gas fracking wasted ‘millions of taxpayers’ cash’, say scientists”, in The Guardian‎^[3]:

     The criticisms were made in the wake of the government’s decision on Friday to impose a moratorium on fracking in the UK. A review published by the Oil and Gas Authority concluded it was impossible to predict the likelihood or scale of earthquakes triggered by fracking.

Derived terms

• anti-fracking

Descendants

• → Korean: 프래킹 (peuraeking)

Translations

hydraulic fracturing — see hydraulic fracturing

Etymology 2

From frack +‎ -ing.

Adjective

fracking (not comparable)

1. (slang, euphemistic, bowdlerization) Fucking.
   • 1991, James Whitehead, Joiner, →ISBN, page 79:

     He's a fracking hawk the likes of which Hopkins never imagined — he's a blue darter.

   • 2006 January, “Best Pentium Chipset”, in Maximum PC‎^[4], page 27:

     As we said before, will someone please agree on a fracking dual videocard standard?

   • 2007, Jose Armando Perez, Betrayed? An Unscheduled Rendezvous, page 68:

     It was a fracking nightmare.

Further reading

• hydraulic fracturing on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Spanish

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from English fracking.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈfɾakin/ [ˈfɾa.kĩn]
• Rhymes: -akin
• Syllabification: frac‧king

Noun

fracking m (uncountable)

1. fracking
   • 2015 July 6, ““La batalla contra el ‘fracking’ no está perdida””, in El País‎^[5]:

     El Estado de Nueva York ha prohibido el fracking, y Francia, y también Bulgaria.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

Usage notes

According to Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) prescriptions, unadapted foreign words should be written in italics in a text printed in roman type, and vice versa, and in quotation marks in a manuscript text or when italics are not available. In practice, this RAE prescription is not always followed.