cockatoo

nounB2+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,197 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: cockatoos

A cockatoo is a noisy white parrot with a crest it can raise. A sulphur-crested cockatoo, the cockatoo screeched, keep a cockatoo.

The crest goes up in alarm or excitement and is the clearest signal the bird gives. They live for decades and are extremely loud, which is why so many end up rehomed. In Australian slang a cockatoo was the lookout for an illegal game.

Definitions of cockatoo

1nouncockatooA noisy white parrot with a crest it can raise.B2+
“Wild cockatoos screeched noisily in the tall trees of the Sydney park.”

cockatoo is a bird.

Where it comes from

Malay kakatua names the bird, and the spelling was reshaped in English towards cock.

Dutch
kaketoe
English, today
cockatoo

Borrowed from Dutch kaketoe. Spelling influenced by cock.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Birds

Practise this word

cockatoo in the wild

On average, they are larger than other parrots; however, the cockatiel, the smallest cockatoo species, is medium-sized.
Cockatoo
The five large black-coloured cockatoos of the genus Calyptorhynchus form one branch.
Cockatoo
In flight, yellow-tailed black cockatoos flap deeply and slowly, with a peculiar heavy fluid motion.
Yellow-tailed black cockatoo
In the wild, the salmon-crested cockatoo inhabits lowland forests below 1,000 metres or 3,300 feet.
Salmon-crested cockatoo
Some additional evidence shows that they eat insects off the ground, and pet Moluccan cockatoos have tested positive for anemia if their diets do not include enough protein.
Salmon-crested cockatoo

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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