Kook: The word surfers love to hate

Welcome to my kookery class! In which I explain where kook came from. It’s more complicated than you think.

???? The etymology theory

This is going to be a tough one. We’re at the crossroads as to where “kook” actually came from.

If you believe Etymology Online, it was adapted by surfers from the beatnik slang of “kooky.” First seen in Life magazine on January 5, 1959. I quote:

“Using the newest show-business jargon, Tammy [Grimes], an American film and theatre actor, admits, ‘I look kooky,’ meaning cuckoo.”

And this is in line with how The Oxford Dictionary still defines kook in this original sense: an informal noun for a crazy or eccentric individual.

???? The kūkae story

But wait. We have a much better origin story available thanks to Matt Warshaw, the original surfing custodian.

According to Matt, the origins of kook have nothing—nada, zero—to do with a cuckoo bird, and everything to do with the Hawaiian word kūkae, meaning basically “poo.”

Wow. I bet you will feel different now when someone calls you a kook.

The story goes that a group of early surfers in the 1940s (led by Dorian “Doc” Paskowitz at San Onofre, California) jokingly named their makeshift outdoor toilet spot “Kukae Canyon,” using the Hawaiian term for excrement. They’d say, “I gotta go take a kūkae,” which soon got shortened to “take a kook.”

From there, as Paskowitz later recalled, anything bad was a “kook,” including somebody who couldn’t surf—or, if he was just an asshole.

???? Kook boxes and kook cords

And then came the kookbox—a hollow surfboard from the ’40s and ’50s, which made it a shittier performer than the surfboards made of balsa wood.

The leash got called a kook cord. There was a polymer foam spray called Kook Repellent.

Surfer Magazine contributed to this whole kookery with a cartoon character named Wilbur Kookmeyer, who lasted 20 years until the mid-1980s.

????‍♀️ The Cardiff Kook

Matt Warshaw also mentions a bronze statue of a surfer, just off Highway 101 in Encinitas, that was nicknamed “The Cardiff Kook.”

I much prefer the original name of the sculpture—Magic Carpet Ride. But hey, apparently the sculpture deserved it. Because, it was, I quote, an unrealistic depiction of a surfer.

People would say the feet were positioned incorrectly, the hands were odd, the figure was too thin and looked like a girl (oh ffs). Or worse—like a beginner surfer about to fall off his board.

All of which is supposed to explain why surfers hate it and punish it by dressing and cross-dressing it up under the cover of night.

???? What does “kook” mean today?

What does kook mean today?

We’re going to go with the EOS definition:

“Timeless derogatory surfing term, generally applied to rank beginners, but also used for any surfer thought to be in violation of surfing’s complex unwritten code of conduct.”

Worth noting, sometimes it’s spelled “kuk.”

And I can promise you one thing. You will never, ever hear me talk about or write about “how to avoid being a kook.”

I simply can’t stand the term.