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Middlemarch vocabulary
6 birds and/or bird terms
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cuckoo
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synonyms: Cuculus canorus ???
tags: [avian]
► definition
Definition:a common, widespread Eurasian bird species that is a brood parisite, viz. it lays its eggs in the nests of other birds so it does not have to deal with raising the brats(photo below of one being raised by a warbler. "Junior's getting BIG!")
photo: By Per Harald Olsen, CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ )]sound file: Alexander Kurthy, XC84060. Accessible at https://www.xeno-canto.org/84060
► uses
Uses:
But if I know 'im, an' he got any kids, he cuckoo'ed 'em, an' somebody else is a-raisin' 'em.
John Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath, p.100 (1939)
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Fool: For you know, nuncle,
The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long
That it had it head bit off by it young.
So out went the candle, and we were left darkling.
Shakespeare. King Lear.
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Beyond the stream was heard the cuckoo. Twice she uttered her usual cuckoo callLeo Tolstoy. Anna Karenina.
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Fucking bitch. She's a cuckoo, laying her egg in my nest.
Paula Hawkins. The Girl on the Train, p.34 (2015)
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'[...] Do you know anything of his history?’
‘It’s a cuckoo’s, sir—I know all about it: except where he was born, and who were his parents, and how he got his money at first. And Hareton has been cast out like an unfledged dunnock! The unfortunate lad is the only one in all this parish that does not guess how he has been cheated.’
Emily Brontë. Wuthering Heights (1847)
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The roses were in bloom, two nightingales soliloquized in the boskage, a cuckoo was just going out of tune among the lime trees.
Aldous Huxley. Brave New World, p.19 (1932)
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