How to Use cuckoo in a Sentence

cuckoo

1 of 2 noun
  • The clock chimes along with the cuckoo bird, and the wheel spins as well.
    — oregonlive, 1 Feb. 2020
  • The first draft was a little bit cuckoo, hence my headspace.
    — Jason P. Frank, Vulture, 10 Oct. 2025
  • In For Good, all of Oz is cuckoo for clock ticks.
    — Rebecca Alter, Vulture, 26 Nov. 2025
  • And Clare keeps on wheedling her way into Irene’s world like a cuckoo.
    — Vulture, 11 Jan. 2022
  • One page has handbag ideas, and, true to form, there is a cuckoo-clock purse, a pyramid purse, a purse shaped as a well.
    — Adam Moss, Vulture, 17 Apr. 2026
  • 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
  • The Thunder’s main stopper is cuckoo for closeouts.
    — Fred Katz, New York Times, 2 Apr. 2026
  • 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
  • This clockwise loop matches the migration of the common cuckoo.
    — Elizabeth Preston, Discover Magazine, 23 Oct. 2015
  • The traditional finery is ornate and the souvenir cuckoo clocks even more so.
    — Matthew Kronsberg, WSJ, 17 June 2022
  • Instead, the Cavs' offensive balance went over the cuckoo's nest.
    — Bill Livingston, cleveland.com, 22 May 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
  • Birds of different species can understand each other’s alarm calls warning of cuckoos.
    — Tom Chivers, semafor.com, 5 Oct. 2025
  • The ritual floats on, coming around each summer like the willow warbler or the common cuckoo.
    — Jordan Michelman, The Atlantic, 4 Sep. 2025
  • In the insect world, these include cuckoo bees, cuckoo bumblebees, and cuckoo wasps.
    — Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, 27 Mar. 2023
  • So if there is something that the president does which is cuckoo, that’s our insurance policy.
    — Time, 2 Mar. 2020
  • 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
  • The brain speaks this electrical language and turns the juice into conversation, cuckoos, car horns.
    — Popular Science, 21 Jan. 2020
  • Daddy's little girl is all grown up, which makes Martin's George Banks a little cuckoo.
    — Hilary Weaver, ELLE, 1 June 2022
  • 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
  • Canada geese are protected, as well as most other geese, swans, ducks, cranes, cuckoos, hummingbirds, doves and flamingos.
    — Kyle Werner, Des Moines Register, 27 Jan. 2026
  • The roadrunner, a member of the cuckoo family, is our local comic.
    — Ernie Cowan, San Diego Union-Tribune, 29 Apr. 2023
  • But this cuckoo take is not how childhood vaccinations go in routine well-baby doctor's visits.
    — ArsTechnica, 24 Sep. 2025
  • Brood parasites such as cuckoos lay their eggs in other birds’ nests, tricking the hosts into caring for their offspring at the expense of their own.
    — Tom Chivers, semafor.com, 5 Oct. 2025
  • Brood parasites such as cuckoos lay their eggs in other birds’ nests, tricking the hosts into caring for their offspring at the expense of their own.
    — Matthew Martin, semafor.com, 6 Oct. 2025
  • 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 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
  • Each spring and fall, the cuckoo uses river corridors as routes to travel between its wintering and breeding grounds.
    — Susan Montoya Bryan, azcentral, 29 Feb. 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
  • Neighbors complain that the peacocks are driving them cuckoo, scratching up their homes and cars and creating messes on their driveways.
    — Cbs Miami Team, CBS News, 10 Aug. 2023

cuckoo

2 of 2 adjective
  • Spring training is going to be cuckoo for more than a few clubs.
    — WSJ, 23 Jan. 2020
  • The young cuckoo wasp eats the nest’s rightful occupant and its food store.
    — Meilan Solly, Smithsonian Magazine, 29 Apr. 2020
  • That is truly cuckoo bananas — and that is saying something with this show.
    — refinery29.com, 4 Aug. 2021
  • In this very cuckoo moment, Double Shot turned sincere, even sad.
    — Darren Franich, EW.com, 28 June 2019
  • The sun and moon don’t trade off mechanically, as we have been taught by nursery mobiles and cuckoo clocks.
    — Sam Anderson, New York Times, 7 July 2017
  • Host birds like reed warblers are wise to the possibility of cuckoo parasitism.
    — Cathleen O'Grady, Ars Technica, 8 Sep. 2017
  • In another photo, the bunting is retreating in terror, as the cuckoo squawks directly in its face.
    — Fox News, 24 June 2020
  • For a weary cuckoo chick, a few extra strength-training sessions might make all the difference between booting its fourth and final nest-mate and having to share its chow.
    — Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic, 26 Oct. 2021
  • Frank Deschandol's original aim was to photograph the vibrant cuckoo wasp.
    — Alan Taylor, The Atlantic, 14 Oct. 2020
  • Alva’s just one of many San Antonians who’s downright cuckoo for Funko Pops.
    — René A. Guzman, San Antonio Express-News, 6 Apr. 2018
  • There are two species of roadrunners in the cuckoo family, the greater and lesser roadrunner, and both live in North America.
    — Shaena Montanari, The Arizona Republic, 3 Sep. 2020
  • Nearby, Esther’s European Imports comes stocked with dirndls, cuckoo clocks, and cowbells.
    — Raphael Kadushin, National Geographic, 7 Aug. 2020
  • In cases like these, in which subjects are claiming harm from a cuckoo experiment, the system is set up to punish the institution rather than give redress to the subject.
    — Marisa Taylor, Washington Post, 21 Dec. 2017
  • This image of two wasps—a cuckoo wasp and a sand wasp—entering their neighboring nests in a sandy part of Normandy, France, was created on more than just a stroke of luck.
    — Rachael Zisk, Popular Science, 20 Oct. 2020
  • That’s the 52-week range of AMC’s share price, which, to use a technical finance-y term, is totally cuckoo bananas.
    — Ryan Faughnder, Los Angeles Times, 8 June 2021
  • Bears were carved into chairs, grandfather and cuckoo clocks, umbrella stands, settees, tables, bookends and various other art objects.
    — Brenda Yenke, cleveland, 12 Aug. 2020
  • Generations later, those simple handmade objects evolved further into cuckoo clocks, music boxes and movie projectors.
    — Pat McDonogh, The Courier-Journal, 12 Jan. 2022
  • Different bird species understand anti-cuckoo warning calls Birds of different species can understand each other’s alarm calls warning of cuckoos.
    — Matthew Martin, semafor.com, 6 Oct. 2025
  • The movie is a colorful, cuckoo-crazy, sometimes funny, often bewildering experience.
    — Katie Walsh, Detroit Free Press, 12 Aug. 2019
  • Hashtag patriots are cobbling together a legend around Maricopa that fits into the cuckoo mythology of Trumpism.
    — Author: Dan Zak, Anchorage Daily News, 23 May 2021
  • Locally, this type of bee includes the Sphecodes species, a red and black bee shaped more like a wasp; cuckoo leaf cutter bee, part of the Coelioxys species; the genus Nomada, which looks a lot like a yellow jacket; and many more all over the state.
    — Linnea Covington, The Know, 4 Aug. 2020
  • In some areas of the Coronado National Forest, Bugbee has witnessed herds of unbranded cattle wreaking havoc on cuckoo habitat.
    — Lindsey Botts, The Arizona Republic, 23 Nov. 2021
  • No manual transmission is available, since many of the car’s active-safety systems don’t play nice with the stick, and Audi tossed the last gen’s lightning-quick dual-clutch auto because Americans are cuckoo for pudding-smooth stoplight launches.
    — Car and Driver, 10 Oct. 2017
  • To say the world had gone cuckoo for Christian Dior would not be an overstatement; reports show that by 1949, Dior’s confections for the closet accounted for nearly three-quarters of France’s fashion exports.
    — Lilah Ramzi, Vogue, 28 Sep. 2021
  • These cuckoo conspiracy theories are symptomatic of a shift in global values from the optimism of the 1990s, when America’s liberal democracy was universally admired, to the current era of fear and anger, when democracy is in retreat.
    — Trudy Rubin, Philly.com, 1 June 2018

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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