Definition
nounAny 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.
nounThe sound of that particular bird.
Sentence Examples
Have you ever seen a cuckoo?
"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" is one of my favorite movies.
People call this kind of bird a cuckoo.
Word Origin & History
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)
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"He knows me, as the blind man knows the cuckoo, / By the bad voice."
— c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i]:
"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'."
— 1971, Gwen White, Antique Toys And Their Background, page 174:
"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."
— 2023, Sally Wainwright, 26:06 from the start, in Happy Valley, season 3, episode 2, spoken by Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire):
"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."
— 1964 August, “Amsterdam Interzonal”, in Chess Review: