Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A wall or shelf clock that announces intervals of time with a sound imitative of a cuckoo's call and often with the simultaneous emergence of a mechanical bird from a small door.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A clock in winch a mechanical cuckoo announces the hours: originally made in the Black Forest or in Switzerland and known as Black Forest clock.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. a clock so constructed that at the time for striking it gives forth sounds resembling the cry of the cuckoo.
WordNet 3.0
- n. clock that announces the hours with a sound like the call of the cuckoo
Examples
“Off the Kimberly exit, down Dixie Fire Brick Road onto Lucas Street, was our new, sixty-five-dollar-a-month home, standing against the night like a shabby cuckoo clock perched on stilts.”
“But at this moment the faint tick-tick of the cuckoo clock in the next room, reaching her ear, reminded her of the object of this midnight expedition of hers.”
“Usually, my falls destroy my dreams, the nervous shock being sufficient to bridge the thousand centuries in an instant and hurl me wide awake into my little bed, where, perchance, I lie sweating and trembling and hear the cuckoo clock calling the hour in the hall.”
“Outside it was nearly dark, and inside it was not much more cheerful – for the fire was nearly out, and no lamps were lighted; only the cuckoo clock went on tick-ticking briskly as usual.”
“Eric gave me boots from Spain, 18-karat-gold earrings from Greece, a hand-carved cuckoo clock from Germany, a pair of fish paintings from Japan, a tiny white lamp from Denmark that could fold into itself when not in use.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘cuckoo clock’.
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Things from my memory
nigger baby, mexican jumping bean, puddle jumper, mood ring, pet rock, cat scratch fever, taxman, hippie, vaseline, argyrol, mercurchrome, methiolade and 655 more...
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Amusing words
interesting words
bonce, furcate, tapioca, tillage, desalinate, garish, litmus, roadhog, azoic, haberdasher, imbroglio, polliwog and 802 more...
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oddball
wackadoodlery.
( personal list )
related (from me):
http://www.wordnik.com/lists/onomatopoeias--1
bric-a-brac, succotash, humbucker, skedaddle, scallywag, sassafras, gadzooks, humdinger, hoity-toity, wishy-washy, namby-pamby, ding dong and 441 more...
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things that freak me out (miscellanea)
( personal list )
unrelated:
http://www.wordnik.com/lists/pop-culturehiccups, talking cows, singing cows, my dreams, wiggles, wordnik, walking goats, donkeys, cuckoo clock, whirling dervish, night crawlers
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Tick Tock Ya Don't Stop
Kinds of clocks.
sundial, hourglass, gnomon, water clock, tally stick, clepsydra, pendulum clock, grandfather clock, longcase clock, chamber clock, cuckoo clock, clock tower and 34 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for cuckoo clock.
treeseed A cuckoo clock is a clock, typically pendulum driven, that strikes the hours using small bellows and pipes that imitate the call of the Common Cuckoo in addition to striking a wire gong. The mechanism to produce the cuckoo call was installed in almost every kind of cuckoo clock since the middle of the eighteenth century and has remained almost without variation until the present.
The design of a cuckoo clock is now conventional. Most are made in the "traditional style" or "chalet" to hang on a wall. In the "traditional style" the wooden case is decorated with carved leaves and animals. Most now have an automaton of the bird that appears through a small trap door while the clock is striking. The bird is often made to move while the clock strikes, typically by means of an arm that lifts the back of the carving.
_Wikipedia Feb 3, 2008