cohobation, a process in alchemy; a repeated distillation. B. Jonson, Alchem. ii. 1 (Face). See NED.

coil, coyle, to beat, thrash; ‘I shall coil them’, Jacob and Esau, v. 4 (near the end); Roister Doister, iii. 3, l. 7 from end; ‘I coyle ones kote, I beate hym, je bastonne,’ Palsgrave. Hence coiling, a beating, Udall, tr. Apoph., Socrates, § 15. ‘Coil’ has still this meaning in Northumberland, see EDD. (s.v. Coil, vb.3).

Cointree, Coventry. Cointree blue, Drayton, Pastorals, Ecl. 4; Ballad of Dowsabel, l. 63.

†coistered; ‘There were those at that time who, to try the strength of a man’s back and his arm, would be coister’d’, Marston, Malcontent, v. 1. 10. Meaning unknown.

coistril, used as a term of contempt, a low varlet; spelt coystrill Twelfth Nt. i. 3. 43; B. Jonson, Every Man in Hum. iv. 2. 137 (Downright). Cp. coistrel, in use in the north country in the sense of a raw, inexperienced lad (EDD.); ‘A coistrel, adolescentulus’, Coles Dict. 1679.

cokes, a simpleton, dupe. B. Jonson, Barth. Fair, i. 1 (Quarlous); Devil an Ass, ii. 1 (Pug); spelt cox, Beaumont and Fl., Wit at sev. Weapons, iii. 1 (Oldcraft).

cokes, to coax. Puttenham, E. Poesie, bk. i, c. 8; p. 36.

colberteen, a kind of open lace, like network. Congreve, Way of the World, v. 1 (Lady Wishfort); Swift, Cadenus and Vanessa, 418. Named from ‘Colbert, Superintendent of the French King’s Manufactures’ (Fop’s Dict. 1690). See NED.

colcarrier, colecarier, a coal-carrier, a low dependant, cringing sycophant; lit. one who will carry coals for another. Golding, tr. of Ovid, The Epistle, p. 2, l. 86. See [coals].

Cold-harbour, Cole-arbour, an old building in Dowgate Ward. Westward Ho, iv. 2 (Justinians); B. Jonson, Sil. Woman, ii. 3 (Morose); Middleton, A Trick to Catch, ii. 1 (Lucre). For an account of the great house called Cold Harbrough, see Stow’s Survey, Dowgate Ward (ed. Thoms, 88. 89).