How to Use cuckoo in a Sentence

cuckoo

noun
  • The clock chimes along with the cuckoo bird, and the wheel spins as well.
    oregonlive, 1 Feb. 2020
  • And Clare keeps on wheedling her way into Irene’s world like a cuckoo.
    Vulture, 11 Jan. 2022
  • The young cuckoo wasp eats the nest’s rightful occupant and its food store.
    Meilan Solly, Smithsonian Magazine, 29 Apr. 2020
  • A collection of Black Forest cuckoo clocks hangs on a wall near the bar.
    Carla Meyer, sacbee.com, 23 June 2017
  • As dawn broke and the rising sun lit the top of the canopy, the cuckoo finally arrived to investigate.
    New York Times, 12 Jan. 2021
  • When a stop-motion alien shows up and steals the meteorite, the town is forced to quarantine and go a little cuckoo.
    David Fear, Rolling Stone, 24 May 2023
  • Shiki took his pen name from the cuckoo, whose song is said to resemble the sound of someone coughing up blood.
    Christopher Benfey, The New York Review of Books, 25 June 2020
  • Here, for example, is the call of the mangrove cuckoo, a small bird found mainly in coastal South Florida forests.
    Tarpley Hitt, miamiherald, 29 Mar. 2018
  • Instead, the Cavs' offensive balance went over the cuckoo's nest.
    Bill Livingston, cleveland.com, 22 May 2017
  • The lobby sits under a cobalt-blue domed ceiling painted with owls and a cuckoo (coucou in French, a nod to the hotel's name) hidden among the branches.
    Rooksana Hossenally, Forbes, 31 Jan. 2022
  • The river is also home to the willow flycatcher and yellow-billed cuckoo.
    Meryl Kornfield, Anchorage Daily News, 23 July 2022
  • Daddy's little girl is all grown up, which makes Martin's George Banks a little cuckoo.
    Hilary Weaver, ELLE, 1 June 2022
  • This clockwise loop matches the migration of the common cuckoo.
    Elizabeth Preston, Discover Magazine, 23 Oct. 2015
  • This member of the cuckoo family is not a seed eater, but often hangs out near my hummingbird feeders in hopes of snatching one out of the air.
    Ernie Cowan, San Diego Union-Tribune, 4 Mar. 2023
  • The traditional finery is ornate and the souvenir cuckoo clocks even more so.
    Matthew Kronsberg, WSJ, 17 June 2022
  • The cuckoos were cuckoo-ing on the hour, and the pendulums were swinging to and fro with each passing second without incident.
    Peter Wade, Esquire, 4 June 2016
  • Jay Qualman is a rare bird in the Detroit jungle: a purebred car cuckoo who nests in the high branches of the automobile business.
    Rich Ceppos, Car and Driver, 27 Nov. 2020
  • Endangered owls and yellow-billed cuckoos are among birds that nest in the Patagonia Mountains.
    Brandon Loomis, The Arizona Republic, 20 June 2023
  • The actions pertain to such species as the yellow-billed cuckoo and Miami tiger beetle, along with bats, salamanders and fish.
    Alan Levin, Bloomberg.com, 7 Oct. 2017
  • In it, Vernon tries hard to entertain a new blue avian friend, unaware that Bird is not sentient but rather a wooden cuckoo fallen from a clock.
    New York Times, 29 June 2018
  • So over the years, when neighbors would grumble about peacocks driving them cuckoo, local officials would side with the birds.
    Patricia Mazzei Alfonso Duran, New York Times, 9 Aug. 2023
  • There are some updates that are less groan-worthy, such as Geppetto's myriad cuckoo clocks that adorn the walls of his workshop.
    Patrick Ryan, USA TODAY, 8 Sep. 2022
  • The common cuckoo, native to the Europe and Asia, is famous for creeping into other birds’ nests and laying an egg, leaving the hapless hosts to raise the chick as their own.
    David Kjaer, National Geographic, 1 Apr. 2016
  • The brain speaks this electrical language and turns the juice into conversation, cuckoos, car horns.
    Popular Science, 21 Jan. 2020
  • In the insect world, these include cuckoo bees, cuckoo bumblebees, and cuckoo wasps.
    Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, 27 Mar. 2023
  • The roadrunner, a member of the cuckoo family, is our local comic.
    Ernie Cowan, San Diego Union-Tribune, 29 Apr. 2023
  • So if there is something that the president does which is cuckoo, that’s our insurance policy.
    Time, 2 Mar. 2020
  • For example, Ludwig van Beethoven’s 6th Symphony simulates a cuckoo with a clarinet, a nightingale with a flute, and a quail with an oboe.
    Stephen Humphries, The Christian Science Monitor, 6 June 2022
  • Meanwhile, the pigeon parents exit the balcony without a trace, but the young cuckoo returns, as if searching for his foster parents or his home.
    Jessica Winter, The New Yorker, 3 Aug. 2023
  • As researchers tracked his flight over 27 countries, a cuckoo became a celebrity and raised questions about how climate change could affect his species’ travel.
    Rebecca Ratcliffe, Wired, 4 July 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'cuckoo.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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