Adjective: cuckoo
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
Perifrastic
| Comparative | more cuckoo |
| Superlative | most cuckoo |
Sample Sentences
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I think I'm going cuckoo!
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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:]
Adjectives inflected like cuckoo
priest-ridden,
unreposed,
evadible,
dissentious,
dissentient,
unforesighted,
egocentrical,
unephemeral,
unennobling,
mensuralist,
flocculent,
unseductive,
whoopsy,
whooshy,
surrogate,
Nicodian,
unrepaired,
prismatoidal,
renorenal,
unseducible, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)
Etymology
1. 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”).
2. Compare dialectal English gowkoo (“cuckoo”). Displaced Middle English gnokken (“cuckoo”) and native Middle English yeke, ȝek (from Old English ġēac (“cuckoo”)), see English gowk.
3. The UK sense is by analogy from the bird's practice of brood parasitism.
4. The Malaysian and Singaporean sense is a calque of Hokkien 咕咕鳥 /咕咕鸟 (ku-kú-chiáu)