Chapter Cock-pit to Cockney of C by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Cock-pit to Cockney

Cock-pit The judicial committee of the privy council is so called, because the council-room is built on the old cock-pit of Whitehall palace.

“Great consultations at the cockpit about battles, duels, victories, and what not.”- Poor Robin's Almanack, 1730.

Cock Sure is cocky sure - pertly confident. We call a self-confident, over-bearing prig a cocky fellow, from the barnyard despot; but Shakespeare employs the phrase in the sense of “sure as the cock of a firelock.”

“We steal as in a castle, cock-sure.”- Shakespeare: 1 Henry IV., ii. 1.

    The French phrase is à coup sûr, as “Nous réussirons à coup sûr, ” we are certain of success, “Cela est ainsi à coup sûr, ” etc., and the phrase “Sure as a gun,” seem to favour the latter derivation.

Cock the Ears (To). To prick up the ears, or turn them as a horse does when he listens to a strange sound. Here “cock” means to turn, and seems to be connected with the Greek a circle, and the verb .

Cock the Nose or Cock up the nose. To turn up the nose in contempt. (See Cock Your Eye )

Cock up your Head [foot, etc.]. Lift up, turn up your head or foot. The allusion is to cocking hay, i.e. lifting it into small heaps or into the haycart. (See Cock Of Hay )

Cock your Eye (To) is to shut one eye and look with the other; to glance at. A “cock-eye” is a squinting eye, and “cock-eyed” is having squinting eyes. In many phrases, cock means to turn. (See above.)

Cock your Hat (To). To set your hat more on one side of the head than on the other; to look knowing and pert. Soldiers cock their caps over the left side to “look smart.” (See Cocked Hat )

Cockade The men-servants of the military wear a small black cockade on their hat, the Hanoverian badge. The Stuart cockade was white. At the battle of Sherra-Muir, in the reign of George I., the English soldiers wore a black rosette in their hats. In the song of Sherra-Muir the English soldiers are called “the red-coat lads wi' black cockades.” (French, cocarde; German, kokarde.)
   In the British Army and Navy the cockade, since the Hanoverian accession, has been black.
   AUSTRIAN cockade is black and yellow. All sentry boxes and boundary posts are so painted. Ein schwarz-gelber was the nickname of an Austrian Imperialist in 1848.
   BAVARIA, light blue and white are the royal colours.
   BELGIUM, black, yellow, and red.
   FRANCE (regal), the royal colour was white.
   HANOVER, the cockade was black. Black enters into all the German cockades.
   PRUSSIA, black and white are the royal colours.
   RUSSIA, green and white are the royal colours.
   To mount the cockade. To become a soldier. From time immemorial the partisans of different leaders have adopted some emblem to show their party; in 1767 an authoritative regulation determined that every French soldier should wear a white cockade, and in 1782 the badge was restricted to the military. The phrase given above is common both to England and France.

Cockaigne (Land of). An imaginary land of idleness and luxury. The subject of a burlesque, probably “the earliest specimen of English poetry which we possess.” London is generally so called, but Boileau applies the phrase to Paris. (See page 270, col. 2, Cockney )
   Allied to the German, kuchen, a cake. Scotland is called the “land of cakes” there is the old French word cocaigne, abundance. Compare Latin coquo, to cook, coquinaria, coquina, etc.
    Ellis, in his Specimens of Early English Poets (i. 83- 95), has printed at length an old French poem called “The Land of Cockaign” (thirteenth century) where “the houses were made of barley sugar and cakes, the streets were paved with pastry, and the shops supplied goods for nothing.”

Cockatrice (3 syl.). A monster with the wings of a fowl, tail of a dragon and head of a cock. So called because it was said to be produced from a cock's egg hatched by a serpent. According to legend, the very look of this monster would cause instant death. In consequence of the crest with which the head is crowned, the creature is called a basilisk, from the Greek, basiliskos (a little king). Isaiah says, “The weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice den” (xi. 8), to signify that the most noxious animal