cuckoo
/ˈkuku/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.14 in modern English
14
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Any of various birds, of the family Cuculidae within the order Cuculiformes, famous for laying its eggs in the nests of other species; but especially a common cuckoo (Cuculus canorus), that has a characteristic two-note call.
Countable; Uncountable
noun
A person who inveigles themselves into a place where they should not be (used especially in the phrase a cuckoo in the nest).
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "He knows me, as the blind man knows the cuckoo, By the bad voice."
- "At dawn they fly away, none knows whither. On the eve of the death of any other Tanville-Tankerton, comes (no matter what be the time of year) a cuckoo. It stays for an hour, cooing, then flies away, none knows whither. Whenever this portent occurs, my steward telegraphs to me, that I, as head of the family, be not unsteeled against the shock of a bereavement, and that my authority be sooner given for the unsealing and garnishing of the family-vault."
- "Switzerland is the home of many musical toys and here were carved whistles in the shapes of birds. These cuckooed realistically when blown into, with the beak opening and shutting, and the tail moving up and down to produce the 'cuck' and the 'oooh'."
- "She'll have been cuckooed. That'll be the Knezevics. They can't launder fast enough, so what do you do with it? Where do you put it? You hide it in somebody else's place; somebody who han't got a clue what's going on and couldn't do a fat lot about it if they did."
- "I think I'm going cuckoo!"
- "71...R/3xN†? [White] resigns?? Lengyel combined to get this cuckoo coup expecting 72 RxR BxP† to win. And Darga's mind, apparently in the same channel, also overlooked 73 K-K3."
Etymology
From Middle English cokkou, kokkow, cukkuk, gokkouȝ, probably from Old French cocu, coquu, cucu (whence French coucou); ultimately onomatopoeic of the song of the male Common Cuckoo (Cuculus canorus), perhaps via Latin cucūlus (“cuckoo”). Compare dialectal English gowkoo (“cuckoo”). Displaced Middle English gnokken (“cuckoo”) and native Middle English yeke, ȝek (from Old English ġēac (“cuckoo”)), see English gowk. The UK sense is by analogy from the bird's practice of brood parasitism. The Malaysian and Singaporean sense is a calque of Hokkien 咕咕鳥 /咕咕鸟 (ku-kú-chiáu)
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈkuku/
- British English: /ˈkʊkuː/
Usage
- Countable
- Uncountable
- Slang
- Colloquial
- British usage
Inflected Forms
cuckoos (plural)
cuckoos (present, singular)
cuckooing (participle, present)
cuckooed (participle, past)
cuckooed (past)
more cuckoo (comparative)
most cuckoo (superlative)