狂う
くるう · kuruu · JLPT N3 · verb-godan
to go mad
🤪 Kuruu sounds like cuckoo: to go cuckoo is to go mad
The kanji 狂 is the dog radical 犭 plus 王, which gives the sound. Read it as a dog gone wild. Some link くるう to くるくる, round and round: a head spinning, or a machine spinning out of order.
狂 — dog radical 犭+ king 王
Originally written with 犬 (dog) as the semantic component and 㞷 as the phonetic, depicting a wildly running dog. The meaning extended from 'mad dog' to 'crazy, wild, unrestrained' in general. The modern form simplifies the right side to 王.