kook

plural kooks

1. USslangAn eccentric, strange or crazy person.

   The administration’s deep cuts to scientific and medical research have been compounded by Trump’s decision to hand control of public health to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a bona fide kook,[…].

   2025 April 29, Jonathan Chait, “An Unsustainable Presidency”, in The Atlantic

   2 more examples

   Not only have those agencies been dismantled — and a number of good men and women gone missing — but officials formerly attentive to my remarks have grown skeptical of them. They have come to look upon me as a friendly kook, and some even regard me with suspicion.

   2007, Trenton Lee Stewart, The Mysterious Benedict Society, page 103

   The kook we will always have with us, to paraphrase Jesus, but the kooks of yore had to work to maintain their kookery and locate fellow kooks. They had to pick up their kook phone, subscribe to the kook newsletter, drive to the kook convention. Nowadays, all the kook has to do is log in to Facebook, where his feed will be enlivened by the chatter of fellow — and likely more extreme — kooks, toward which Facebook’s algorithms helpfully steer him.

   2019 January 29, Tom Bissell, “An Anti-Facebook Manifesto”, in New York Times

   Synonyms: nutjob, odd duck, weirdo, basket case, basket weaver, crack, crackpot, crazy

2. hobbiesA boardsport participant who lacks style or skill; a newbie who acts as if they are better at the sport than they are.

plural Kooks

1. A surname.