cowl-staff, coul-staff, cole-staff, a stout pole orig. used for carrying a ‘cowl’ or tub, esp. a water-tub; ‘Cudgels, colestaves’, Fletcher, Woman’s Prize, i. 1 (Tranio); Merry Wives, iii. 3. 156; Select Records Oxford, 92. Cowl, for a large tub or barrel, is in prov. use in various parts of England, see EDD. (s.v. Cowl, sb.2 1 and 2). ME. cowle (Prompt., in Harl. MS.).
cowshard, a piece of cowdung. Gosson, School of Abuse, p. 19; ‘Bouse de vache, the dung of a cow, a cow-shard’, Cotgrave. In use in Yorks., Lanc., Derby., and Wilts. (EDD.).
coxcomb, a fool’s cap; lit. cock’s comb. King Lear, i. 4. 105; also jocularly, the head, ib. ii. 4. 125.
coy, to render quiet, appease. Palsgrave; to stroke soothingly, to caress, Mids. Night’s D. iv. 1. 2; to coy it, to behave coyly, to affect shyness, Massinger, New Way, iii. 2. OF. coi, still, quiet, O. Prov. quet, ‘coi, tranquille’ (Levy), Romanic type quetu-, L. quiētum. See [quoying].
coystrel. In Dryden, Hind and Panther, iii. 1119, a corrupt form of ‘kestrel’ (a base kind of hawk).
coystril; see [coistril].
cozier, cosier, a cobbler. Twelfth Nt. ii. 3. 97; ‘A cosier or cobler, remendón’, Minsheu, Span. Dict. 1599. OF. cousere, a seamster, one who sews (Godefroy), couseör, acc., O. Prov. cozedor, ‘couturier’ (Levy); deriv. from cosere, to sew, Romanic type representing L. consuere, to sew together; see Hatzfeld.
craboun, corrupt form of ‘carbine’. ‘Discharge thy craboun’, Return from Parnassus, iv. 2 (Ingenioso).
craccus, a kind of tobacco. Middleton, A Fair Quarrel, iv. 1 (Trimtram); Beaumont and Fl., Woman’s Prize, i. 2 (Livia); where ed. 1625 has cracus (mod. ed. crocus). NED. suggests that the word means tobacco of Caraccas, in Venezuela.
crack, a pert, forward boy. B. Jonson, Cynthia’s Revels, Induct. (3 Child); Massinger, Unnat. Combat, i. 1 (Usher). Hence your crackship, address to a page, Middleton, Blurt, Mr. Constable, ii. 1 (Hippolito). Crack-halter, playfully ‘a rogue’, Gosson, School of Abuse, p. 30; Lyly, Mother Bombie, iii. 4 (Song). Also crack-hempe, Tam. Shrew, v. 1. 46; and crack-rope, ‘Baboin, a crack-rope, wag-halter, unhappie rogue, retchlesse villaine’, Cotgrave; Edwards, Damon and Pithias, in Anc. Eng. Drama, i. 88 (Hazlitt, iv. 68).