cock

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See also: Cock

English[edit]

English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia
A cock (1)

Pronunciation[edit]

Etymology 1[edit]

From Middle English cok, from Old English coc, cocc (“cock, male bird”), from Proto-West Germanic *kokk, from Proto-Germanic *kukkaz (“cock”), probably of onomatopoeic origin.

Cognate with Middle Dutch cocke (“cock, male bird”) and Old Norse kokkr ("cock"; whence Danish kok (“cock”), dialectal Swedish kokk (“cock”)). Reinforced by Old French coc, also of imitative origin. The sense "penis", etymologically unrelated, is attested since at least the 1610s, with the compound pillicock (“penis”) attested since 1325.

Noun[edit]

cock (countable and uncountable, plural cocks)

  1. A male bird, especially:
    2. A rooster: a male gallinaceous bird, especially a male domestic chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus).
    3. A cock pigeon.
  2. A valve or tap for controlling flow in plumbing.
    • 1864, Robert Niccol, Essay on Sugar, and General Treatise on Sugar Refining:
      The liquor is discharged from the cock S into liquor cans V […] , from which it is transferred to the sugar in the moulds. W represents one of the traps or stairs which communicate with respective floors of the sugarhouse.
  3. The hammer of a firearm trigger mechanism.
  4. (colloquial, vulgar) The penis.
  5. (curling) The circle at the end of the rink.
  6. The state of being cocked; an upward turn, tilt or angle.
    • 1823 December 23 (indicated as 1824)​, [Walter Scott], St Ronan’s Well. [...] In Three Volumes, volume (please specify |volume=I, II, or III), Edinburgh: Printed [by James Ballantyne and Co.] for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co., OCLC 79179534, page 32:
      […] with a knowing cock of his eye to his next neighbour. Of this person little need be said.
    • 1843, James Anthony Froude, John Tulloch, Fraser's Magazine, page 694:
      […] in 1803; my eyes transmogrified […] ; my nose had lost its pretty cock, and had grown elegantly hooked; and […]
    • 1866, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables: A Romance, page 166:
      One day, however, by her self-important gait, the side-way turn of her head, and the cock of her eye, as she pried into one and another nook of the garden, […]
  7. (Britain, New Zealand, derogatory, slang) A stupid, obnoxious or contemptable person.
  8. (Britain, derogatory, slang, chiefly uncountable) Nonsense; rubbish; a fraud.
    • 1851, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor
      The running patterer cares less than other street-sellers for bad weather, for if he "work" on a wet and gloomy evening, and if the work be "a cock," which is a fictitious statement or even a pretended fictitious statement, there is the less chance of any one detecting the ruse.
    • 1956, William Golding, Pincher Martin:
      "You used to talk an awful lot of cock."
    • 2013, M. J. Trow, Swearing Like A Trooper: Rude Slang of World War Two:
      That Hitler's armies can't be beat is just a load of cock, / For Marshal Timoshenko's boys are pissing through von Bock […]
  9. (slang, Britain, Tasmania) A man; a fellow, especially as a term of address.
    All right, cock?
    • 1848, Thomas Frost, Paul the Poacher (page 118)
      Now, in coming down here, I journeyed part of the way with a jolly old cock, who shed a tear with me every time the coach stopped […]
  10. A boastful tilt of one's head or hat.
  11. (informal) Shuttlecock.
  12. A vane in the shape of a cock; a weathercock.
  13. (dated, often humorous) A chief person; a leader or master, or (formerly, now obsolete) a leading thing.
    • 1542, Nicholas Udall (translator), Erasmus (original author), Apophthegmata, page 164:
      The contrarye [side of a die] to this... was called Venus, or Cous, and yt was cocke, the beste that might be cast.
    • 1672 (original), 1776 (printed), Andrew Marvell, The Works of Andrew Marvell, page 154:
      Tis sir Salomon's sword; cock of as many men as it hath been drawn against. Woe worth the man that comes in the way of so dead-doing a tool, […]
    • 1711 August 11, Joseph Addison; Richard Steele, “TUESDAY, July 31, 1711 [Julian calendar]”, in The Spectator, number 132; republished in Alexander Chalmers, editor, The Spectator; a New Edition, […], volume II, New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton & Company, 1853, OCLC 191120697:
      Sir Andrew is the cock of the club, since he left us.
    • 1833, James Shirley, The Dramatic Works and Poems of James Shirley, page 232:
      She is a widow, don, consider that; Has buried one was thought a Hercules, Two cubits taller, and a man that cut Three inches deeper in the say, than I; Consider that too : She may be cock o'twenty, nay, for aught know, she is immortal.
  14. The crow of a cock, especially the first crow in the morning; cockcrow.
  15. A male fish, especially a salmon or trout.
    • 2005, Roderick Sutterby, Malcolm Greenhalgh, “Life in the Nursery”, in Atlantic Salmon: An Illustrated Natural History, Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, →ISBN, page 21:
      As spawning time approaches – autumn or very early winter in most rivers, though in some late-run streams salmon may spawn as late as January or February – the hen's colouration becomes first a matt-pewter and then a drab dark brown-grey. The cock fish, in contrast, begins to gain some brighter colours.
    Synonym: cockfish
    Coordinate terms: hen, henfish
  16. The style or gnomon of a sundial.
    • 1656, William Dugard, (Please provide the book title or journal name):
      Sun-dials, when the shadow of the Cock by passing over the lines of the hours […] show the stay of the time sliding by.
  17. The indicator of a balance.
    • 1833, John Holland, Treatise on the Manufactures in Metal:
      The cock, or pointer, which makes a right angle with the beam, will stand upright when the weighing is accurate.
  18. The bridge piece that affords a bearing for the pivot of a balance in a clock or watch.
    • (Can we date this quote?) “London Gazette”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name):
      A round small Silver Watch […] with a steel Chain […] a brass Cock, an endless Screw
Synonyms[edit]
Derived terms[edit]
Related terms[edit]
Descendants[edit]
  • Sranan Tongo: kaka
  • Tok Pisin: kok
Translations[edit]
male chicken; male gallinaceous bird — see rooster
valve or tap for controlling flow of liquid — see stopcock
slang: penis — see dick
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked

Verb[edit]

cock (third-person singular simple present cocks, present participle cocking, simple past and past participle cocked)

  1. (transitive, intransitive) To lift the cock of a firearm or crossbow; to prepare (a gun or crossbow) to be fired.
    • 1812, Lord Byron, The Waltz
      Cocked, fired, and missed his man.
  2. (intransitive) To be prepared to be triggered by having the cock lifted.
    In the darkness, the gun cocked loudly.
  3. (transitive) To erect; to turn up.
    • 1720, John Gay, Thursday: Or, The Spell
      Our Lightfoot barks, and cocks his ears.
    • 1728, Jonathan Swift, A Dialogue Between Mad Mullinix and Timothy
      Dick would cock his nose in scorn.
  4. (Britain, transitive, slang) To copulate with; (by extension, as with fuck) to mess up, to damage, to destroy.
    "Please tell me the way to Cockfosters"... "Drink it warm, mate."
  5. (transitive) To turn or twist something upwards or to one side; to lift or tilt (e.g. headwear) boastfully.
    He cocked his hat jauntily.
  6. (intransitive, dated) To turn (the eye) obliquely and partially close its lid, as an expression of derision or insinuation.
  7. (intransitive, dated) To strut; to swagger; to look big, pert, or menacing.
  8. (transitive, obsolete) To make a nestle-cock of, to pamper or spoil (of children)
Derived terms[edit]
Translations[edit]
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked

Interjection[edit]

cock

  1. (slang) Expression of annoyance.
    • 2006, "Vamp", oh cock i should have kept with a toyota! (on newsgroup uk.rec.cars.modifications)

See also[edit]

Etymology 2[edit]

Uncertain. Some authors speculate it derives from cockle, a yonic fertility symbol,[1] others suggested it entered Southern US vernacular during the period of French rule (of Louisiana) from Cajun French coquille (“shell”) (itself the source of cockle), which in 18th and 19th century slang meant the vulva.[2]

Noun[edit]

cock (plural cocks)

  1. (Southern US, where it is now rare and dated; and African-American Vernacular, where it is still sometimes used) Vulva, vagina. [since at least the 1920s; less common after the 1960s]
    • c. 1920-1960, Rufus George Perryman (Speckled Red), quoted by Elijah Wald, The Dozens: A History of Rap's Mama:
      Born in the canebrake and you were suckled by a bear,
      Jumped right through your mammy's cock and never touched a hair.
    • 1933(–35?), Lucille Bogan, Till the cows come home:
      I told him I gotta good cock
      and it's got four damn good names:
      Rough top,
      rough cock,
      tough cock,
      cock without a bone.
      […] If you suck my pussy, / baby, I'll suck your dick.
    • 1949 March 2, Mrs. H. K. of Camden, Missouri, quoted by Vance Randolph, Unprintable Ozark Folksongs and Folklore: Roll me in your arms, Volume 1:
      I've got a girl in Castle Rock,
      She wears a moustache on her cock.
    • 1998, Scarface, Fuck Faces (song):
      I stuck my fist up in her cock, she didn't budge or move it.
    • 2010, Vildred C. Tucker-Dawson, A Journey Back in Time: My Story Book:
      She smelled like she was on her period and hadn't changed pads. On ah many occasions I heard men say her cock smelled through her clothing.

References[edit]

  1. ^ Elijah Wald, The Dozens: A History of Rap's Mama
  2. ^ Vance Randolph, Unprintable Ozark Folksongs and Folklore: Roll me in your arms, Volume 1: "cock [...] is a southernism [...] where a northerner would say, or expect, cunt. This confusing usage originated during the French domination of the U. S. south; it comes from the French term, [...] coquille, cockleshell, for the vagina"; the work has examples from as early as 1927

Etymology 3[edit]

From Middle English cokke, cock, cok, from Old English -cocc (attested in place names), from Old Norse kǫkkr (“lump”), from Proto-Germanic *kukkaz (“bulge, swelling”), from Proto-Indo-European *geugh- (“swelling”).

Cognate with Norwegian kok (“heap, lump”), Swedish koka (“a lump of earth”), German Kocke (“heap of hay, dunghill”), Middle Low German kogge (“wide, rounded ship”), Dutch kogel (“ball”), German Kugel (“ball, globe”).

Noun[edit]

cock (plural cocks)

  1. A small conical pile of hay.
    The farmhands stack the hay into cocks.
Derived terms[edit]
Translations[edit]

Verb[edit]

cock (third-person singular simple present cocks, present participle cocking, simple past and past participle cocked)

  1. (transitive) To form into piles.
Translations[edit]

Etymology 4[edit]

from Middle English cok, from Old French coque (“a type of small boat”), from child-talk coco ('egg').

Noun[edit]

cock (plural cocks)

  1. Abbreviation of cock-boat, a type of small boat.

Etymology 5[edit]

Proper noun[edit]

cock

  2. (obsolete) A corruption of the word God, used in oaths.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “cock” in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.)

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