3. (Charterhouse).—A lavatory where changing for games, washing before
meals, etc., goes on. [From the taps over the basins.] It is equivalent
to the Winchester Moab (q.v.).
Cock’s Egg. To give one a cock’s egg, phr. (common).—To send one on a
fool’s errand; to gammon (q.v. for synonyms). The expression is of the
same type as ‘to send one to buy pigeon’s milk,’ ‘oil of strappum,’
‘strap oil,’ etc.
Cock-Shy, subs. (popular).—A mark, butt, or target; any person or thing
that is the centre of jaculation.
c. 1834. Marryat, Rattlin the Reefer, p. 92. What a fine cockshy he
would make, said Master Blubberlips.
18(?). Lord Strangford, Letters and Papers, p. 215. This was as if the
great geologists ... had invited two rival theorists to settle the
question of a geological formation by picking up the stones and
appealing to the test of a cockshy.
1849. Thackeray, Pendennis, ch. iii. He had seen Tom Ricketts, of
the fourth form, who used to wear a jacket and trousers so
ludicrously tight, that the elder boys could not forbear using him
in the quality of a butt or cockshy.
1876. Hindley, Life and Adventures of a Cheap Jack, p. 262. A
desperate fight ensued, the ‘nobblers’ arming themselves with
cock-shy sticks.
Cock-Stand, subs. (venery).—An erection of the penis. For synonyms, see
Horn and Cf., Stand.
Cock-Sucker, subs. (venery).—A fellatrix.
Cocksure, adj. (colloquial).—Confidently certain; pertly sure.
[Probably a corruption of ‘cocky sure.’ We call a self-confident,
overbearing prig a cocky fellow, from the barnyard despot. Shakspeare
(I Henry IV., ii., 1) employs the phrase in the sense of ‘sure as the
cock of a firelock.’
We steal as in a castle, cocksure:
and still earlier usages imply its derivation from the fact that the
cock was much surer than the older fashioned match.]
1549. Latimer, Sermon on the Ploughers, p. 32 (Arber’s ed.) For the
Deuyll was dysapoynted of his purpose for he thoughte all to be hys
owne. And when he had once broughte Christe to the crosse, he
thought all cock-sure.
1603. John Day, Law Trickes, Act iii., p. 30. Then did I learn to
... Make false conueyances, yet with a trick, Close and cock-sure,
I cony-catch’d the world.
1667. Dryden, Sir Martin Marr-all, Act. iv. Nothing vexes me, but
that I had made my game cock-sure, and then to be backgammoned.
b. 1738, d. 1819. Wolcot (‘Paul Pindar’), Odes to the Pope, II., in
wks. (Dublin, 1795) V. ii., p. 492. Yet deem themselves, poor dupes,
cocksure of Heav’n.
1837. R. H. Barham, The Ingoldsby Legends (ed. 1862), 320. Last of
all, gentle Reader, don’t be too secure!—Let seeming success never
make you cock-sure.
1849. T. Carlyle, IV., 108. [Yes, Manning was shot there; he had
told us Hyde was cocksure.]
1884. W. C. Russell, Jack’s Courtship, ch. iii. ‘Hawke will not get
his daughter to have him, he may be cocksure of that.’
1889. The Star, Aug. 24, p. 3, col. 4. In his most insolent and
cocksure manner he declared, etc.
Cocktail, subs. (common).—1. A prostitute; a wanton.