cacare

Cacare is an onomatopoeic term used in some Romance languages to describe the clucking sounds produced by chickens. In Portuguese, the related verb cacarejar means “to cluck,” and cacare is the stem used in this verbal form. The term is primarily encountered in discussions of poultry behavior, agricultural writing, and literature that aims to evoke farm life or animal sounds.

As an onomatopoeia, cacare imitates the cadence of a hen’s clucks, which can vary in tempo and emphasis depending on the bird’s activity and environment. Because it represents a sound rather than a concrete object, cacare is most often encountered in descriptive or illustrative contexts rather than as a standalone technical term.

Linguistically, cacare is connected to the broader practice of forming animal sounds into recognizable words. It may appear in dictionaries or field guides to illustrate the sound of poultry, and in creative writing to convey realism or mood. The usage is largely regional, with prominence in Portuguese-language sources and related linguistic traditions.

Cacare highlights how language captures animal vocalizations and how such sounds are integrated into everyday speech, folklore, and educational material about farming. See also onomatopoeia, poultry, and animal sound symbolism.