It is now equivalent to kidnap, i.e. to nab kids (children), once a lucrative pursuit. The surgical trepan is a different word altogether, and belongs to Greco-Lat. trypanon, an auger, piercer. To allure is to bring to the lure, or bait. To the same group of metaphors belongs inveigle, which corresponds, with altered prefix, to Fr. aveugler, to blind, Vulgar Lat. *ab-oculare.[86] A distant relative of this word is ogle, which is of Low German origin; cf. Ger. liebäugeln "to ogle, to smicker, to look amorously, to cast sheeps-eyes, to cast amorous looks" (Ludwig).
The archaic verb to cozen is a metaphor of quite another kind. Every young noble who did the grand tour in the 16th and 17th centuries spent some time at Naples, "where he may improve his knowledge in horsemanship" (Howell, Instructions for Forreine Travell, 1642). Now the Italian horse-dealers were so notorious that Dekker, writing about 1600, describes a swindling "horse-courser" as a "meere jadish Non-politane," a play on Neapolitan. The Italian name is cozzone, "a horse-courser, a horse-breaker, a craftie knave" (Florio), whence the verb cozzonare, "to have perfect skill in all cosenages" (Torriano). The essential idea of to cozen in the Elizabethans is that of selling faulty goods in a bad light, a device said to be practised by some horse-dealers. At any rate the words for horse-dealer in all languages, from the Lat. mango to the Amer. horse-swapper, mean swindler and worse things. Cozen is a favourite word with the Elizabethan dramatists, because it enables them to bring off one of those stock puns that make one feel "The less Shakespeare he"—
"Cousins, indeed; and by their uncle cozen'd
Of comfort, kingdom, kindred, freedom, life."
(Richard III., iv. 4.)
In the Merry Wives of Windsor (iv. 5) there is a lot of word-play on "cousins-german" and "German cozeners." An exact parallel to the history of cozen is furnished by the verb to jockey, from jockey, in its older sense of horse-dealer.
HORTICULTURE
Scion is a metaphor from the garden. It is Fr. scion, "a scion; a young and tender plant; a shoot, sprig, or twig" (Cotgrave). Ger. Sprössling, sproutling, is also used of an "offshoot" from a "stock." We have a similar metaphor in the word imp. We now graft trees, a misspelling of older graffe, Fr. greffe, Greco-Lat. graphium, a pencil, from the shape of the slip. But the older word was imp, which we find also used of inserting a new feather into the wing or tail of a hawk, or fitting a small bell-rope to a larger one. The art of grafting was learnt from the Romans, who had a post-classical verb imputare,[87] to graft, which has given Eng. imp, Ger. impfen, Fr. enter, and is represented in most other European languages. Imp was used like scion, but degenerated in meaning. In Shakespeare it has already the somewhat contemptuous shade of meaning which we find in Ger. Sprössling, and is only used by comic characters. Thus Pistol addresses Prince Hal—
"The heavens thee guard and keep, most royal imp of fame."
(2 Henry IV., v. 5.)
But Thomas Cromwell, in his last letter to Henry VIII., speaks of—