Other forms: cuckoos
A cuckoo is a bird that lays its eggs in the nests of others. Hear the cuckoo, the cuckoo's egg, a cuckoo clock.
The chick hatches first and pushes the other eggs out, and the host parents feed a bird that outgrows them. Different females specialise in different host species and match their eggs to them. The name imitates the call. Cuckoo also means mad, informally.
1nouncuckooA bird that lays its eggs in other birds' nests.
“We heard the first cuckoo of spring calling from the woods.”
cuckoo is a bird.
Old French cucu, imitating the call of the male bird. Most European languages name it the same way.
Latin
cucūlus — cuckoo
Old French
cocu
Middle English
cokkou
English, today
cuckoo
From Middle English cokkou, kokkow, cukkuk, gokkouȝ, probably from Old French cocu, coquu, cucu (whence French coucou); ultimately imitative of the sound of the song of the male Common Cuckoo (Cuculus canorus), perhaps via Latin cucūlus (“cuckoo”). Compare dialectal gowkoo (“cuckoo”). Displaced gnokken and native Middle English yeke, ȝek (from ġēac), see gowk. The UK sense is by analogy from the bird's practice of brood parasitism.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA