Chapter Cotillon to Coup d'Etat of C by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Cotillon to Coup d'Etat

Cotillon (co-til'-yon) means properly the “under-petticoat.” The word was applied to a brisk dance by eight persons, in which the ladies held up their gowns and showed their under-petticoats. The dance of the present day is an elaborate one, with many added figures.

Cotset The lowest of bondsmen. So called from cot-seat (a cottage-dweller). These slaves were bound to work for their feudal lord. The word occurs frequently in Domesday Book.

Cotswold Barley You are as long a-coming as Cotswold barley. Cotswold, in Gloucestershire, is a very cold, bleak place on the wolds, exposed to the winds, and very backward in vegetation, but yet it yields a good late supply of barley.

Cotswold Lion A sheep for which Cotswold hills are famous. Fierce as a Cotswold lion (ironical).

Cotta in Pope's Moral Essays (Epistle 2). John Holles, fourth Earl of Clare, who married Margaret, daughter of Henry Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, and was created Duke of Newcastle in 1694 and died 1711.

Cottage Countess (The). Sarah Higgins, of Shropshire, daughter of a small farmer, in 1790 married Henry Cecil, Marquis of Exeter and Lord of Burleigh. The bridegroom was at the time living under the name of John Jones, separated from his wife, whose maiden name was Emma Vernon. She eloped with a clergyman, and subsequently to the second marriage “John Jones,” the lord of Burleigh, obtained a divorce and an Act of Parliament to legitimatise the children of his second wife. Sarah Higgins was seventeen at the time of her marriage, and “John Jones” was thirty. They were married by licence in the parish church of Bolas. Tennyson has a poem on the subject called The Lord of Burleigh, but historically it is not to be trusted.

Cottage Orne (A) (French). A cottage residence belonging to persons in good circumstances.

Cottys One of the three Hundred-handed giants, son of Heaven and Earth. His two brothers were Briareus [Bri-a-ruce ] and Gyges or Gyes. (See Hundred-Handed, Giants .)

Cotton To cotton to a person. To cling to one or take a fancy to a person. To stick to a person as cotton sticks to our clothes.

Cotton Lord A great cotton lord. A rich Manchester cotton manufacturer, a real lord in wealth, style of living, equipage, and tenantry.

Cottonian Library In the British Museum. Collected by Sir R. Cotton, and added to by his son and grandson, after which it was invested in trustees for the use of the public.

Cottonopolis Manchester, the great centre of cotton manufactures.

“His friends thought he would have preferred the busy life of Cottonopolis to the out-of-way county of Cornwall.”- Newspaper paragraph, January, 1886.

Cotytto The Thracian goddess of immodesty, worshipped at Athens with nocturnal rites.

“Hail! goddess of nocturnal sport,
Dark-veiled Cotytto.”
Milton: Comus, 129, 130.

Coucy Enguerrand III., Sire de Coucy, has won fame by his arrogant motto:

“Roi je ne suis,
Ni Prince, ni comte, aussi,
Je suis Le Sire de Coucy.”

Couleur de Rose (French). Highly coloured; too favourably considered; overdrawn with romantic embellishments, like objects viewed through glass tinted with rose pink.

Coulin A British giant, pursued by Debon (one of the companions of Brute) till he came to a chasm 132 feet across, which he leaped; but slipping on the opposite side, he fell back into the chasm and was killed. (Spenser: Faërie Queene.) (See Giants .)