cuckoo

The story

1. Latin · derived fromcucūlus“cuckoo”
2. Old French · derived fromcocu
3. Middle English · inherited fromcokkou
4. English todaycuckoo

From Middle English cokkou, kokkow, cukkuk, gokkouȝ, probably from Old French cocu, coquu, cucu (whence French coucou); ultimately onomatopoeic of the song of the male Common Cuckoo (Cuculus canorus), perhaps via Latin cucūlus (“cuckoo”). Compare dialectal English gowkoo (“cuckoo”). Displaced Middle English gnokken (“cuckoo”) and native Middle English yeke, ȝek (from Old English ġēac (“cuckoo”)), see English gowk. The UK sense (verb sense 3) is by analogy from the bird's practice of brood parasitism. The Malaysian and Singaporean sense (noun sense 8) is a phono-semantic matching of Hokkien 咕咕鳥 /咕咕鸟 (ku-kú-chiáu)

Words from the same roots