cuckoo

cuck·oo

C0792600 (ko͞o′ko͞o, ko͝ok′o͞o)n. pl. cuck·oos 1. a. A grayish bird (Cuculus canorus) of Eurasia and Africa that has a characteristic two-note call and lays its eggs in the nests of birds of other species.b. Any of various other birds of the family Cuculidae.2. The call or cry of one of these birds.3. Slang A foolish or crazy person.tr.v. cuck·ooed, cuck·oo·ing, cuck·oos To repeat incessantly, as a cuckoo does its call.adj. Slang Lacking in sense; foolish or crazy.

[Middle English cuccu, of imitative origin.]

cuckoo

(ˈkʊkuː) n, pl -oos1. (Animals) any bird of the family Cuculidae, having pointed wings, a long tail, and zygodactyl feet: order Cuculiformes. Many species, including the European cuckoo (Cuculus canorus), lay their eggs in the nests of other birds and have a two-note call2. informal an insane or foolish personadjinformal insane or foolishinterjan imitation or representation of the call of a cuckoovb, -oos, -ooing or -ooed3. (tr) to repeat over and over4. (intr) to make the sound imitated by the word cuckoo[C13: from Old French cucu, of imitative origin; related to German kuckuck, Latin cucūlus, Greek kokkux]

cuck•oo

(ˈku ku, ˈkʊk u)

n., pl. -oos,
v.
adj. n. 1. any of various usu. slim, stout-billed, long-tailed birds of the order Cuculiformes: many species noted for their brood parasitism. 2. a common Eurasian cuckoo, Cuculus canorus, with a monotonously repeated call. 3. the call of this cuckoo. 4. Informal. a crazy or foolish person. v.t. 5. to repeat monotonously. adj. 6. Informal. crazy; silly; foolish. [1200–50; Middle English cuc(c)u, cuccuk(e) (imitative)]

cuckoo

Past participle: cuckooed
Gerund: cuckooing

Imperative
cuckoo
cuckoo

Present
I cuckoo
you cuckoo
he/she/it cuckoos
we cuckoo
you cuckoo
they cuckoo

Preterite
I cuckooed
you cuckooed
he/she/it cuckooed
we cuckooed
you cuckooed
they cuckooed

Present Continuous
I am cuckooing
you are cuckooing
he/she/it is cuckooing
we are cuckooing
you are cuckooing
they are cuckooing

Present Perfect
I have cuckooed
you have cuckooed
he/she/it has cuckooed
we have cuckooed
you have cuckooed
they have cuckooed

Past Continuous
I was cuckooing
you were cuckooing
he/she/it was cuckooing
we were cuckooing
you were cuckooing
they were cuckooing

Past Perfect
I had cuckooed
you had cuckooed
he/she/it had cuckooed
we had cuckooed
you had cuckooed
they had cuckooed

Future
I will cuckoo
you will cuckoo
he/she/it will cuckoo
we will cuckoo
you will cuckoo
they will cuckoo

Future Perfect
I will have cuckooed
you will have cuckooed
he/she/it will have cuckooed
we will have cuckooed
you will have cuckooed
they will have cuckooed

Future Continuous
I will be cuckooing
you will be cuckooing
he/she/it will be cuckooing
we will be cuckooing
you will be cuckooing
they will be cuckooing

Present Perfect Continuous
I have been cuckooing
you have been cuckooing
he/she/it has been cuckooing
we have been cuckooing
you have been cuckooing
they have been cuckooing

Future Perfect Continuous
I will have been cuckooing
you will have been cuckooing
he/she/it will have been cuckooing
we will have been cuckooing
you will have been cuckooing
they will have been cuckooing

Past Perfect Continuous
I had been cuckooing
you had been cuckooing
he/she/it had been cuckooing
we had been cuckooing
you had been cuckooing
they had been cuckooing

Conditional
I would cuckoo
you would cuckoo
he/she/it would cuckoo
we would cuckoo
you would cuckoo
they would cuckoo

Past Conditional
I would have cuckooed
you would have cuckooed
he/she/it would have cuckooed
we would have cuckooed
you would have cuckooed
they would have cuckooed

Thesaurus

Noun	1.	cuckoo - a man who is a stupid incompetent foolbozo, fathead, goof, goofball, jackass, twat, zany, goosefool, muggins, saphead, tomfool, sap - a person who lacks good judgment
	2.	cuckoo - any of numerous European and North American birds having pointed wings and a long tailcuculiform bird - birds having zygodactyl feet (except for the touracos)Cuculidae, family Cuculidae - includes cuckoo; ani; roadrunnerCuculus canorus, European cuckoo - common cuckoo of Europe having a distinctive two-note call; lays eggs in the nests of other birdsblack-billed cuckoo, Coccyzus erythropthalmus - North American cuckoo; builds a nest and rears its own youngchaparral cock, Geococcyx californianus, roadrunner - speedy largely terrestrial bird found from California and Mexico to Texasani - black tropical American cuckoocoucal - Old World ground-living cuckoo having a long dagger-like hind claw
Verb	1.	cuckoo - repeat monotonously, like a cuckoo repeats his callecho, repeat - to say again or imitate; "followers echoing the cries of their leaders"

cuckoo

nounSlang. A person regarded as strange, eccentric, or crazy:crackpot, crazy, eccentric, lunatic.Informal: crank, loon, loony.Slang: ding-a-ling, dingbat, kook, nut, screwball, weirdie, weirdo.adjectiveSlang. Afflicted with or exhibiting irrationality and mental unsoundness:brainsick, crazy, daft, demented, disordered, distraught, dotty, insane, lunatic, mad, maniac, maniacal, mentally ill, moonstruck, off, touched, unbalanced, unsound, wrong.Informal: bonkers, cracked, daffy, gaga, loony.Slang: bananas, batty, buggy, fruity, loco, nuts, nutty, screwy, wacky.Chiefly British: crackers.Law: non compos mentis.Idioms: around the bend, crazy as a loon, mad as a hatter, not all there, nutty as a fruitcake, off one's head, off one's rocker, of unsound mind, out of one's mind, sick in the head, stark raving mad.

Translations

杜鹃布谷鸟

cuckoo

(ˈkukuː) – plural ˈcuckoos – noun a bird, named after its call, which lays eggs in the nests of other birds. 杜鹃，布谷鸟

cuckoo

→ 杜鹃zhCN

cuckoo

cuckoo,

common name for members of the extensive avian family Cuculidae, including the ani and the roadrunner (Geococcyx californianus), widely distributed in temperate and tropical regions. Cuckoos are slender-bodied, long-tailed birds with medium to stout down-curved bills, pointed wings, short legs (except in the terrestrial species), and dull (usually grayish brown or rufous) plumage. They are generally insectivorous and arboreal.

Of the parasitic Old World cuckoos, the common European cuckoo, Cuculus canorus, is typical. The female visits the nests of smaller birds, selecting those whose eggs match hers in color, and replaces an egg of the host with one of her own; she usually lays four or five eggs, each at 48-hr intervals and each in a different nest. Because the female can retain an egg inside inside its body longer, leading to internal incubation, the embryo is more developed when the egg is laid. The young cuckoo, hatching earlier and being larger than its nest mates, displaces them from the nest and becomes the sole recipient of its foster parents' care.

Each species of Old World cuckoo has its own unique pattern of parasitism, and different species choose different host species for their eggs. The cuckoo is referred to in the Bible, by Aristotle and Pliny, in mythology, and in English poetry. Its nesting habits have given us the word cuckold, and its simple but musical song, which gives it its name, was used by Beethoven in his Pastoral Symphony and is also imitated in the cuckoo clock.

The American cuckoos look like attenuated pigeons; they are not parasitic and build flimsy nests of twigs. Typical are the black-billed and yellow-billed (Coccyzus americanus) cuckoos, known for their low, chuckling call notes. They frequent and breed at the edges of deciduous woodlands, either species tending the young of the other. These birds are valued as destroyers of harmful insects—particularly the tent caterpillar, which few other birds will eat. There are also western and southern species.

Most gregarious of the cuckoos are the anis of the American tropics. The groove-billed ani, from 12 to 14 in. (30–35 cm) long, has black plumage with a faint purple gloss. Anis nest colonially, several females together laying as many as 25 eggs in the same nest, and they may breed at any time of the year.

Of the ground cuckoos, the roadrunner, or chaparral cock, of the southwest deserts is best known. It feeds mostly on small snakes and lizards, which it pounds to death with its heavy bill and swallows headfirst. The roadrunner speeds over the ground at up to 15 mi (24.14 km) per hr with its long tail extended horizontally, its head down, and its ragged crest erect. Roadrunners are weak fliers and nonmigratory. They build coarse nests in thorny bushes; because they lay at intervals, both eggs and young may appear together in the nest.

Also included in the cuckoo family are the coucals, medium to large in size, slow-flying, mostly terrestrial birds of the tropics from Africa to Australia, e.g., the black coucal, Centropus grillii. Cuckoos are classified in the phylum ChordataChordata
, phylum of animals having a notochord, or dorsal stiffening rod, as the chief internal skeletal support at some stage of their development. Most chordates are vertebrates (animals with backbones), but the phylum also includes some small marine invertebrate animals.
..... Click the link for more information. , subphylum Vertebrata, class Aves, order Cuculiformes, family Cuculidae.

Cuckoo

any one bird of the suborder Cuculi of the order Cuculiformes. The body measures 15–70 cm long. The bill is bent slightly downward, the tail is usually long and stepped (in some species the tail is forked). The legs are short, and the fourth toe may be directed backward; some ground species have long legs. The dense, short plumage is gray, black, white, or brown in color. The males and females usually have similar coloration. There is one family, the Cuculidae, which comprises six subfamilies (38 genera, 128 species).

Cuckoos are distributed throughout the world except for Antarctica; however, they are found primarily in the tropics. In the USSR there are six species. The common European cuckoo (Cuculus canorus), which measures approximately 35 cm long and weighs about 100 g, is found everywhere except in the tundra. The Himalayan cuckoo (C. saturatus) inhabits forests from Eastern Europe to the Far East. The Indian cuckoo (C micropterus) lives along the basin of the Amur River. The small cuckoo (C poliocephalus) and Hodgson’s hawk cuckoo (Hierococcyx fugax) are found in the forests of the southern Primor’e. The great spotted cuckoo (Clamator glandarius) from Moldavia and Turkmenia is found sporadically. All cuckoos that live in the USSR are migratory, wintering in southern Asia and Africa.

There are approximately 50 species of cuckoos (including all those found in the Soviet Union) that do not build nests and do not brood their eggs. They lay their eggs in the nests of other birds (nest parasitism). Some species take over the nests of other birds but care for their own young; others build their own nests and raise their own young. The females lay from two to seven eggs. The cuckoo the common ani (Crotophaga ani) lays its eggs in a common nest and broods them communally. There are more than 120 known species of host birds, or foster parents, for the common European cuckoo; however, as a rule, cuckoos lay their eggs in only a few other species’ nests. In one particular region the cuckoo may use the nest of the redstart; in another, the nest of the sedge warbler. The color of the cuculine egg is similar to that of the host bird. Upon finding a nest, the cuckoo removes one of the host’s eggs (or less commonly, several eggs) by either eating it or carrying it off and replaces it with one of its own. The cuckoo lays from 12 to 20 eggs each summer. The embryo of the cuculine egg develops more rapidly than those of the host bird (usually in 12.5 days for the common European cuckoo). When the young cuckoo hatches, it throws out the foster parents’ eggs or newly hatched young. In 20 to 22 days the young common European cuckoo leaves the nest.

Although cuckoos destroy other birds and their nests, they are, at the same time, beneficial owing to their destruction of various harmful forest insects (particularly the hairy caterpillars of the silkworm moth). The American common ani feeds in flocks among herds of ungulates, destroying ticks and other parasitic insects. The roadrunner (Geococcyx mexicanus) lives in deserts and eats lizards and snakes. Some cuckoos, such as the crow pheasant (Centropus sinensis), eat fruits and berries.

REFERENCES

Ptitsy Sovetskogo Soiuza, vol. 1. Edited by G. P. Dement’ev and N. A. Gladkov. Moscow, 1951.
Zhizn’ zhivotnykh, vol. 5. Moscow, 1970.

A. I. IVANOV

cuckoo

[′ku̇‚kü] (vertebrate zoology) The common name for about 130 species of primarily arboreal birds in the family Cuculidae; some are social parasites.

cuckoo

symbolizes adulterous betrayal by wife. [Western Folklore: Jobes, 395; Mercatante, 164]See: Cuckoldry

cuckoo

any bird of the family Cuculidae, having pointed wings, a long tail, and zygodactyl feet: order Cuculiformes. Many species, including the European cuckoo (Cuculus canorus), lay their eggs in the nests of other birds and have a two-note call

cuckoo

cuck·oo

cuckoo

cuck•oo

cuckoo

cuckoo

cuckoo

cuckoo

cuckoo

cloud-cuckoo land

be in cloud-cuckoo land

cuckoo in the nest

live in cloud-cuckoo land

cuckoo

cloud-cuckoo land

cuckoo in the nest

coo-coo

cuckoo

Cloud Cuckoo Land

cuckoo

cuckoo,

Cuckoo

REFERENCES

cuckoo

cuckoo

cuckoo

cuckoo

Synonyms for cuckoo

noun a person regarded as strange, eccentric, or crazy

Synonyms

adj afflicted with or exhibiting irrationality and mental unsoundness

Synonyms

Synonyms for cuckoo

noun a man who is a stupid incompetent fool

Synonyms

Related Words

noun any of numerous European and North American birds having pointed wings and a long tail

Related Words

verb repeat monotonously, like a cuckoo repeats his call

Related Words