Forms: 3 cuccu, 4 coccou, cockou, 4–5 cukkow, cokkow, (5 cocow, co-, kockowe, cucko, cauko, kukkowe, 5–6 cuckowe, 6 cocowe, cokowe, -oue, koko, kookoo, cokow, coockow; Sc. gukkow, gukgo, guk-guk; 6–7 cuckoe, 7 cukcow, cockow, (cocoe), 5–9 cuckow, 7– cuckoo. [Identical with F. coucou (12–15th c. cucu), imitating the cry of the bird.
The OE. name was ʓéac, rare ME. ȝeke, cognate with Ger. gauch, ON. gaukr, whence Sc. and north Eng. GOWK. In many languages a tendency has been shown from time to time to abandon inherited forms of this bird’s name, which, even though originally echoic, have under the operation of phonetic changes gradually ceased to be so, in order to go back anew to the call of the bird. Thus, since the 15th c. gauch has in Ger. been superseded by kuckuk, from LG. kukuk, MDu. cucûc, Du. koekoek, a form founded upon the call; and this in some Ger. dialects has given way to the entirely imitative kuku, guckgu, gúgku, kuckú (see Grimm). Cf. Gr. kókkūξ, cuckoo, beside κόκκυ the call; med.Gr. κοῦκος, mod.Gr. κοῦκο the bird. The L. was cuculus (cf. Skr. kôkilas) and cucūlus, whence It. cucu·lo, Pr. cogul; also in late L. (and ? Plautus) cucus, whence Sp., Pg. and It. dial. cuco. The Fr. cucu, coucou was not the representative of any L. form, but taken anew from the call of the bird itself; ME. cuccu might also be directly echoic, but being found only after the Norman conquest, it was prob. influenced by French example, though the annual lessons given by the bird have prevented the phonetic changes which the word would normally have undergone. In Scotch the stress is as in OF. on the second syllable (kukū). With the 16th-c. Sc. forms in guk- cf. Bavarian gucku, and various early variants of German kuckuk, as gucguc, guckkug, etc.]
1. A bird, Cuculus canorus, well known by the call of the male during mating time, of which the name is an imitation. Cuckoo’s note (fig.): repetition of the same words.
It is a migratory bird, arriving in the British Islands in April, and hence welcomed as the ‘harbinger of spring’; it does not hatch its own offspring, but deposits its eggs in the nests of small birds, as the hedge-sparrow, water-wagtail, yellow-hammer, and others; to this peculiarity many allusions occur: cf. also CUCKOLD.
c. 1240. Cuckoo Song. Sumer is icumen in … murie sing cuccu! Cuccu! cuccu! Wel singes þu cuccu, ne swik þu nauer nu.
1340. Ayenb., 22. Þe yelpere is þe cockou þet ne kan naȝt zinge bote of him-zelue.
c. 1381. Chaucer, Parl. Foules, 358. Ther was … the cokkow [v.r. cucko, cuckow, kukkowe, cuccow] most onkynde.
14[?]. Nominale, in Wr.-Wülcker, 702. Hic cuculus, cauko.
c. 1475. Pict. Voc., ibid. 762. A cocow.
1513. Douglas, Æneis, XII. Prol. 241. The gukgo [1553 gukkow] galis, and so quytteris the quaill.
1529. More, Dyaloge, I. Wks. 132/1. No more meruailous is a koko than a cock.
1594. Spenser, Amoretti, xix. The merry Cuckow, messenger of Spring.
1605. Shaks., Lear, I. iv. 235. You know Nunckle, the Hedge-Sparrow fed the Cuckoo so long, that it’s had it head bit off by it young.
1649. Blithe, Eng. Improv. Impr., ii. (1653), 14. He … may as well make a hedge to keep in the Cuckow.
1728–46. Thomson, Spring, 578. From the first note the hollow cuckoo sings, The symphony of Spring.
1749. Wesley, in Wks., 1872, X. 28. Sir, I must come in again with my cuckoo’s note,—The proof! Where is the proof!
1804. Wordsw., To the Cuckoo, i. O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird, Or but a wandering Voice?
1841–4. Emerson, Ess., Over-Soul, Wks. (Bohn), I. 111. Yonder masterful cuckoo Crowds every egg out of the nest … except its own.
b. The family name of the Cuculidæ, of which the common cuckoo is the type; the various genera and species are known as crested cuckoo, lark-heeled, spur-heeled, or pheasant cuckoo, etc.; also the tree, yellow-billed, and hook-billed cuckoos, ground cuckoos, and gregarious cuckoos, American types of the family.
1797. Prisc. Wakefield, Mental Improv. (1800), 262. It is a species of cuckow.
1813. Bingley, Anim. Biog., II. 118. The different species of Cuckoos are scattered through the four quarters of the globe.
1837. Swainson, in Penny Cycl., VIII. 207/1. I have no doubt that the great length of tail possessed by nearly all the cuckoos is given to them as a sort of balance.
1861. Swinhoe, N. China Camp., 16. You hear the soft notes of the striated cuckoo.
2. The note of the bird, or an imitation of it.
c. 1240. [see 1].
1562. J. Heywood, Prov. & Epigr. (1867), 216. In Apryll the Koocoo can syng hir song by rote,… At fyrst, kooco, kooco, syng styll can she do.
1549. Compl. Scot., vi. 39. The titlene followit the goilk, ande gart hyr sing guk guk.
1588. Shaks., L. L. L., V. ii. 911. Cuckow, Cuckow: O word of feare, Vnpleasing to a married eare.
1856. Capern, Poems (ed. 2), 92.
| Cuckoo, cuckoo, singing mellow, | |
| Ever when the fields are yellow. |
3. Applied to a person; esp. in reference to the bird’s monotonous call, or its habit of laying its eggs in the nests of other birds; also = fool, ‘gowk.’
1581. J. Bell, Haddon’s Answ. Osor., 59 b. This lesson you learned of your Cowled Coockowes, to braule alwayes with bare names.
1596. Shaks., 1 Hen. IV., II. iv. 387. A Horsebacke (ye Cuckoe), but a foot hee will not budge a foot.
1609. Ev. Woman in Hum., II. i. in Bullen, O. Pl., IV. 331. An excellent Cuckoo, hee keepes his note in Winter.
1612. Pasquils Night-Cap (1877), 75. What Cuckoe laid this egge within your nest.
1823. Scott, Peveril, xxiii. The cuckoo I travel with … he also has his uses.
1872. O. W. Holmes, Poet Breakf.-t., i. 12. We Americans are all cuckoos,—we make our homes in the nests of other birds.
† 4. Gardening. See quot.; = F. coucou. Obs.
1693. Evelyn, De la Quint. Compl. Gard., II. 158. We must take exact care to pluck all the Cuckows among them, that is, those Strawberry plants that blossom much without knitting.
5. (Usually in pl.) The local name of several spring flowers, as the Cuckoo-flower Cardamine pratensis, the Orchis mascula and O. Morio, the common Blue-bell Scilla nutans, the Ragged Robin, etc. Cf. Britten and Holland, Plant Names.
1878. Mrs. H. Wood, Pomeroy Ab. (ed. 3), 56. The long, deep-pink flowers that children call cookoos.
6. A species of fish; also called cuckoo-fish, -wrasse. local.
1848. C. A. Johns, Week at Lizard, 230. One species [Labrus variegatus] … is called by the fishermen a cuckoo, and is probably the ‘striped wrasse’ of authors.
ǁ 7. = F. coucou, a small coach running from Paris to the suburbs.
1821. W. Irving, in Life & Lett. (1864), II. ii. 46. Took a place in a cuckoo to St. Cloud.
8. attrib. a. Of or pertaining to the cuckoo.
1627. P. Fletcher, Locusts, II. xxxiv. There layd they Cuckoe eggs, and hatch’t their brood unblest.
1742. Young, Nt. Th., iii. 375. The cuckow-seasons sing The same dull note to such as nothing prize.
1802. Bingley, Anim. Biog. (1813), II. 118. Of the Cuckoo tribe in general.
b. Resembling, or suggestive of, the cuckoo and its uniformly repeated call.
1650. T. B[ayley], Worcester’s Apoph., 78. Not a little angry with this Redmans cukcow play.
1797. Mrs. A. M. Bennett, Beggar Girl (1813), III. 159. The hundred thousand rix-dollars were the cuckoo song with Christiana.
1831. Capt. Berkeley, in Ho. Com., 5 July. The cuckoo note … of ‘the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill.’
1858. Sat. Rev., 6 Nov., 438/1. The cuckoo cry that party is extinct.
1859. Helps, Friends in C., Ser. II. I. viii. 238. Tired of hearing this cuckoo exclamation.
9. Comb., as cuckoo-bird; cuckoo-like adj. and adv.; cuckoo-ale, ‘ale drunk out of doors to welcome the cuckoo’s return’ (Halliwell); cuckoo-ball, ‘a light ball made of party-colored rags, for young children’ (Forby); cuckoo-bee, a genus of bees that deposit their eggs in the nests of other bees; † cuckoo-bone, the coccyx; cuckoo(’s) bread, the Wood-sorrel; also the Lady’s Smock; cuckoo-dove, a genus of doves of the East Indies and Australia; cuckoo-feeder, a form of feeder in the bellows of an organ; cuckoo-fish, see 6 above; also the boar-fish; cuckoo(’s)fool, maid(en, mate, the Wryneck, which arrives at or about the same time as the cuckoo; cuckoo-froth, = CUCKOO-SPIT2; cuckoo-gilliflower, the Ragged Robin, Lychnis Flos-cuculi; cuckoo-grass, the Field-Rush, Luzula campestris, flowering in spring; cuckoo gurnard, a fish, Trigla cuculus, which emits a sound resembling the cuckoo’s call when taken out of the water; cuckoo-lamb, a lamb born between April and June; cuckoo(’s)-maid, mate = cuckoo-fool; -maid, in Hereford, the Red-backed Shrike; cuckoo-orchis, Orchis mascula; cuckoo-point = CUCKOO-PINT; cuckoo-ray, a fish, a species of ray; cuckoo’s-eye, Geranium Robertianum and Veronica chamædryo; cuckoo(’s) shoe, Dog Violet; cuckoo-shell, a local name of the whelk; cuckoo-shrike, the Caterpillar-catcher; † cuckoo-spell, name suggested by Puttenham for the rhetorical figure Epizeuxis; cuckoo-wrasse, see 6 above.
1839. Todd, Cycl. Anat., II. 930/2. In the *cuckoo-bee … there are four imperfectly developed spines.
1598. Shaks., Merry W., II. i. 127. Ere sommer comes, or *Cuckoo-birds do sing.
1668. Culpepper & Cole, Barthol. Anat., IV. xv. 351. Os Coccygis the *Cockow-bone, so called from the shape it hath of a Cuckows-bill.
1516. Gt. Herbal, l. (1529), C vj b. Alleluya is an herbe called *cuckowes brede.
1578. Lyte, Dodoens, I. xl. 58. The leaues of Cuckowbread, sower Tryfoly, or Alleluya.
1776. Withering, Brit. Plants (1796), II. 431. Yellow-flowered Cuckowbread.
1661. Lovell, Hist. Anim. & Min., Introd. The Mullet, swallow fish, *cuckow-fish.
1872. Proc. Berw. Nat. Club, VI. 386. *Cuckoo froth, which is secreted by the little frogskip insect.
1578. Lyte, Dodoens, II. vii. 157. It is called … Wilde Williams, Marshe gillofers, and *Cockow gillofers.
1749. W. Ellis, Shepherd’s Guide, 73. All lambs yeaned in April or May are called with us, in Hertfordsire, the *cuckoo lambs, because they fall in cuckoo time.
1570. B. Googe, Pop. Kingd., III. 40. Or *coocoolike continually, one kinde of musique sing.
1601. Bp. W. Barlow, Defence, 95. This Cuckow-like Palinodie of Councels, Doctours, and Church.
1832. G. Downes, Lett. Cont. Countries, I. 183. He had two English words, ‘very good! very good!’ which, cuckoo-like, he was constantly reiterating.
1865. Cornh. Mag., July, 36. In the North the wryneck is called the *‘cuckoo-maiden,’ because its song foretells the cuckoo’s approach.
1597. Gerarde, Herbal, I. xcix. § 6. 159. Called male Foole stones, and *Cuckow Orchis.
1877. ‘Ouida,’ Puck, xxi. 234. The sunny azure of the little *cuckoo’s-eye flowers.
1589. Puttenham, Eng. Poesie, III. xix. (Arb.), 211. We might very properly, in our vulgar and for pleasure call him the *cuckowspell.
1865. J. C. Wilcocks, Sea-Fisherman (1875), 122. The Cook or *Cuckoo-Wrasse, of which the blue marks are very beautiful in their hue.
