homing
/ˈhəʊmɪŋ
/adjective
1Relating to an animal’s ability to return to its territory after travelling away from it: a strong homing instinct...
- Their homing abilities could also provide scientists with new clues to the long-debated role of the Earth's magnetic fields in animal movements and migrations.
- The relocation operation relies on the birds' excellent natural homing instinct, which compels them to return to the site where they hatched.
- To see whether they have a homing ability, Boles caught more than 100 lobsters in different locations and transported them for about an hour in various deceptive ways to a test site.
1.1(Of a pigeon) trained to fly home from a great distance and bred for long-distance racing.I thought the bird should make its own way home being a homing pigeon, but I was quite happy to give it a lift....
- On one of his trips, Amundsen took a homing pigeon with him.
- The romantic image of the homing pigeon using mysterious forces to navigate its way hundreds of miles back to its perch appears to be no such thing.
1.2(Of a weapon or piece of equipment) fitted with an electronic device that enables it to find and hit a target: a homing missile...
- He didn't look to the left, he didn't look to the right, he came straight in the door and ran straight down to my brother like a homing missile.
- It is an optically-sighted weapon, but also contains a heat-seeking homing device.
- The Lynx adds considerably to the destroyer's firepower - it can fly at 180 knots, and has its own Sea Skua anti-ship missiles and homing torpedoes.
