cuckoo's nest
1
9.9
- noun
- /ˈkʊkuːz nɛst/
- Slur
:
manicomio (despectivo)
- After his breakdown, he was sent to a local cuckoo's nest for treatment.
Examples
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Using the phrase cuckoo's nest to describe a hospital is now considered insensitive.
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After his erratic behavior, his friends joked he'd be sent to the cuckoo's nest.
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The novel's setting is a notorious cuckoo's nest where the patients struggle for dignity.
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He was sent to a cuckoo's nest after his breakdown.
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Some people refer to the old facility as a cuckoo's nest.
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Many people believe that the conditions in a cuckoo's nest are often harsh and dehumanizing.
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In the movie, the protagonist finds himself trapped in a cuckoo's nest filled with eccentric patients.
Synonyms
26
8.0
A very noisy, chaotic place often used to describe a mental hospital or busy shop
13
9.9
A rude informal word for a hospital for people with mental illness
4
9.2
A noisy place where many people shout and act in a confused way
1
9.9
A hospital where people with mental illness lived and got treatment in the past
Surface Forms
Morphology
cuckoo's + nest
There is a partial connection: 'cuckoo' can be used figuratively to mean 'crazy' and 'nest' denotes a place, so a speaker familiar with that figurative use could infer 'a place of crazy people.' However, the conventionalized meaning 'psychiatric hospital' depends on idiomatic/cultural knowledge (e.g. literary and slang usage) and is not fully predictable from the literal constituents, so a B1 learner who only knows the basic word senses may not derive the institutional sense.
Etymology
Cuckoo's nest may come from calling someone a cuckoo because the bird's name was used to mean 'crazy', and nest meant the place where they lived. The picture of a nest of cuckoos became a way to talk about a place for people seen as 'crazy', so the phrase came to mean 'a psychiatric hospital' and is now often seen as rude.