kook
noun/kuːk/
Etymology Possibly from cuckoo.
- 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:
- 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: