coat-card, a playing card bearing a ‘coated’ figure (king, queen, or knave). In regular use till the Revolution, 1688; afterwards perverted into Court-card. B. Jonson, Staple of News, iv. 1 (Madrigal). Also, coat, Massinger, Old Law, iii. 1 (Cook); B. Jonson, New Inn, i. 1.
coath, to faint, to swoon away. Skinner, 1671 (a Lincoln word); ‘To coath (swoon away), Animo linqui, deficere’, Coles, 1679. ‘Coath’ is still used in this sense in E. Anglia (EDD.). ME. cothe, or swownyng, ‘sincopa’ (Prompt.). OE. coðu, disease; cp. coe, a word for a disease of sheep, cattle in W. Somerset, see EDD. (s.v. Coe, sb.1 1). See [quoth].
cob, the head of a red herring. Dekker, Honest Wh., Pt. II. (Wks., 1873, ii. 147); ‘A herring cob, la teste d’un harang sor’, Sherwood.
cob, cobbe, a wealthy man; a miser; ‘Ryche cobbes’, Udall, tr. of Apoph., Diogenes, § 149; Stubbes, Anat. Abuses, ii. 27 (NED.).
cobbe, a male swan; ‘The hee swanne is called the cobbe, and the she-swanne the penne’, Best, Farm. Bks. (ed. 1856, p. 122). Hence cob-swan, B. Jonson, Catiline, ii. 1 (Fulvia). ‘Cob’ is still in use in Norfolk (EDD.).
cockal(l, a knucklebone of a sheep, with which boys played ‘knucklebones’. Herrick, The Temple, 59; the game played, Cotgrave (s.v. Tales). See Nares.
cockall, a paragon, a pattern, of supreme excellence; ‘He was the very cockall of a husband’, Marston, Antonio, Pt. I, iii. 2. 6.
cockatrice, a name for the basilisk, a serpent supposed to kill by its mere glance, and to be hatched from a cock’s egg. Bible, Isaiah lix. 5; Romeo, iii. 2. 47; applied to a woman of loose life, B. Jonson, Cynthia’s Rev. iv. 1; Killigrew’s Pandora (Nares). Orig. a name for the crocodile. OF. caucatris (cocatris), crocodile; Med. L. caucatrices, ‘crocodili’ (Ducange); cp. O. Prov. calcatris, crocodile (Levy). See NED.
cock-a-two, cock of two, a cock that has conquered two, a conqueror of two. Little French Lawyer, ii. 3 (La Writ). See Nares.
cockers, leggings, gaiters. Drayton, Pastorals, Ecl. iv; Ballad of Dowsabel, l. 59. In prov. use from the north country to the W. Midlands and E. Anglia (EDD.). ME. cokeres (P. Plowman, C. Text, ix. 59). Probably the same word as OE. cocor, a quiver.