cocket, a ship’s certificate that goods for export had paid duty. Gascoigne, Steel Glas, ll. 258, 1058. Anglo-F. cokette, app. the seal with which the certificate was assured (Rough List).
cocket, pert, saucy, stuck up. Heywood, Rape of Lucrece, ii. 5 (song); Coles Dict. 1677. In prov. use from north country to the W. Midlands, meaning ‘pert, saucy’, also, ‘brisk, merry, lively’ (EDD.).
cockledemois, pl. (perhaps) a natural product of some kind representing money. Chapman, Mask of the Middle Temple, § 2. (Not found elsewhere, except as Cockledemoy, the name of a knave in Marston’s Dutch Courtezan). Dr. H. Bradley suggests that this word may represent Port. coquílho de moeda; coquílho, fruit of an Indian palm; moeda, money.
cockloche, a term of reproach or contempt, a mean fellow, a silly coxcomb. Shirley, Witty Fair One, ii. 2 (Clare); spelt cocoloch, Beaumont and Fl., Four Plays in One, Triumph of Honour, sc. 1 (Nicodemus). F. coqueluche, a hood, also a person who is all the vogue. See Dict. de l’Acad. (1762).
Cock Lorel, the name of the owner and captain of the boat containing jovial reprobates of all trades in a sarcastic poem, Cocke Lorelles Bote, printed c. 1515; used also allusively with the sense of ‘rogue’; ‘Here is fyrst, Cocke Lorell the Knyght’ (ed. 1843, p. 4); ‘Cock-Lorrell would needs have the Devill his guest’, B. Jonson, Gipsies Metam. (Song). See [Lorel].
cockney, (1) a cockered child, a child tenderly brought up, hence (2) a squeamish, foppish, effeminate fellow. (1) Tusser, Husbandry, 183; Baret, Alvearie, C. 729; (2) Twelfth Nt. iv. 1. 15; a squeamish woman, King Lear, ii. 4. 123. ME. cokenay, an effeminate person (Chaucer, C. T. A. 4208); coknay, ‘delicius’ (Prompt.).
cockqueene; the same as [cuckquean].
cockshut time, twilight. Richard III, v. 3. 70. The twilight, or dim light in which woodcocks could most easily be caught in cockshuts. A cockshut, or cockshoot, was a broadway or glade in a wood, through which woodcocks might dart or shoot, and in which they might be caught with nets; see EDD. ‘A fine cock-shoot evening’, Middleton, The Widow, iii. 1. 6; cp. Arden of Feversham, iii. 2. 47.
cocksure, absolutely secure. Skelton, Why Come ye nat to Court, 279; Conflict of Conscience, iii. 3. 1 (in Hazlitt’s Dodsley, vi. 67); with absolute security, 1 Hen. IV, ii. 1. 94.
cocoloch; see [cockloche].