Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Cuckoo Clock |
Cuckoo ClockNoun1. Clock that announces the hours with a sound like the call of the cuckoo. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
The design of a cuckoo clock is now conventional. Most are made in the shape of a rustic birdhouse or chalet. They hang on the wall, and are housed in wooden cases, frequently decorated with carved leaves; sometimes deer and other animals are added. Most now have an automaton of the bird that appears through a small trap door when the clock is striking, and vanishes behind the door after the clock is done.
The bird is often made to move while the clock strikes, typically by means of an arm that lifts the back of the carving. Some have musical movements, and play a tune on a music box before striking the hours or half-hours. Musical cuckoo clocks frequently have other automata that move when the music box plays. The clocks are almost always weight driven; a very few cuckoo clocks are spring driven.
In recent years, fake quartz battery powered cuckoo clocks have been sold; these do not have genuine cuckoo bellows, and typically generate their striking sounds electronically. The weights are conventionally cast in the shape of pinecones. The pendulum bob is often another carved leaf. The dial is small, and typically marked with Roman numerals.
The cuckoo clock was invented in the Black Forest town of Schönwald, Germany, by Franz Ketterer in 1738. Ketterer designed the system of small bellows and whistles that imitates the Cuckoo's call, and added them to a standard Dutch clock. Later refinements of the design changed the clock's shape to the familiar birdhouse or chalet. The centre of their production continues to be in the Black Forest region of Germany, in the area of Triberg and Neustadt. The cuckoo clock is often wrongly associated with Switzerland.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Cuckoo clock."
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Instantaneity | Clock, wall clock, pendulum clock, grandfather's clock, cuckoo clock, alarm clock, clock radio; watch, pocket watch, stopwatch, Swiss watch; atomic clock, digital clock, analog clock, quartz watch, water clock; chronometer, chronoscope, chronograph; repeater; timekeeper, timepiece; dial, sundial, gnomon, horologe, pendulum, hourglass, clepsydra; ghurry. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. (The Third Man; writing credit: Graham Greene; Alexander Korda) | |
Movie/TV Titles | The Cuckoo Clock (1950) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit |  | Chief Petty Officers study books on "Personnel Management", in the battleship's "Chief's Quarters", circa 1923-25. Note ornate cuckoo clock on the bulkhead in the background. Credit: NAVY. |
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
| Play | Caption |
 | Cuckoo clock chiming three o'clock. |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "cuckoo clock"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Bulgarian | часовник с кукувица. (various references) | |
Czech | kukaèky, hodiny s kukaèkou. (various references) | |
Danish | forsiring til kukur (cuckoo clock ornaments). (various references) | |
French | ornements d'horloge coucou (cuckoo clock ornaments). (various references) | |
German | Verzierung fuer Kuckucksuhr (cuckoo clock ornaments). (various references) | |
Hungarian | kakukkos óra. (various references) | |
Italian | ornamenti dell'orologio a cuculo (cuckoo clock ornaments). (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | 鳩時計 . (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | はとどけい. (various references) | |
Manx | clag cooaig. (various references) | |
Pig Latin | uckoocay ockclay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | relógio cuco. (various references) | |
Russian | часы с кукушкой (cuckoo-clock). (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | sat sa kukavicom. (various references) | |
Spanish | reloj de cuclillo. (various references) | |
Swedish | gökur. (various references) | |
Turkish | guguklu saat. (various references) | |
Vietnamese | đ"ng h" đánh chuông như tiếng chim cu cu. (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "c-c-c-c-k-k-l-o-o-o-u" | |
-5 letters: cuckoo. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Usage: Modern 3. Usage: Commercial 4. Images: Slideshow | 5. Images: Photo Album 6. Sounds 7. Expressions: Internet 8. Translations: Modern | 9. Anagrams 10. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
