Heading
5. (common).—Primarily the fictitious narratives in verse or prose of murders, fires, etc. (see quot., 1851), produced for sale in the streets. Famous manufactories of cocks were kept by 'Jemmy' Catnach and Johnny Pitts, called the Colburn and Bentley of the 'paper' trade. They fought bitterly, and Catnach informed the world that Pitts had once been a 'bumboat woman,' while Pitts declared—
That all the boys and girls around, Who go out prigging rags and phials, Know Jemmy Catnach!!! well, Who lives in a back slum in the Dials.
Catnach got at last to be 'Cock of the Walk,' and remained so till his retirement in 1839. [Hotten thought the word might be a corruption of cook, a 'cooked' or garbled statement, or a coinage from 'cock and bull story.'] Fr., une goualante.
1851-61. H. Mayhew, Lon. Lab. and Lon. Poor, vol. I., p. 228. What are technically termed cocks, which, in polite language, means accounts of fabulous duels between ladies of fashion, of apocryphal elopements . . . or awful tragedies, etc.
Hence applied to any incredible story.
1870. London Figaro, 1 Feb. We are disposed to think that cocks must have penetrated to Eastern Missouri.
6. (thieves').—An abbreviation of 'cockney.'
7. (printers').—In gambling or playing with 'quads,' a cock is when one (or more) of the nine pieces does not fall flat but lodges crosswise on another. The player is then given another chance.
8. (tailors').—Good cock—poor cock. A good and bad workman respectively.
Adj. (colloquial).—Chief; first and foremost. Cf., Cock, subs., sense 2.
1676. Etherege, Man of Mode, II., ii., in wks. (1704), 211. Why the very cock-fool of all those fools, Sir Fopling Flutter.
1856. T. Hughes, Tom Brown's School-days, pt. II., ch. vi. They'll make the old Madman cock medicine-man and tattoo him all over.
Verb (venery).—1. To copulate. Usually employed by women and in the passive sense: e.g., 'to want cocking,' or 'to get cocked.' For synonyms, see Ride.
2. (common).—To smoke.
Cock the eye, verbal phr. (colloquial).—To shut or wink one eye; to leer; to look incredulous. Fr., cligner des œillets. Cf., Cock-eyed. [In venery a woman with a cock in her eye = a woman in a condition of sexual excitement, a woman that 'means business.' Cf., Pintle-keek (q.v.) and Look Pricks.] Of the kindred phrase, to cock the chin, an illustration appears in Elegant Extracts.
As Dick and Tom in fierce dispute engage, And face to face the noisy contest wage; 'Don't cock your chin at me,' Dick smartly cries. 'Fear not, his head's not charg'd,' a friend replies.
The French equivalent is s'aborgner (literally 'to make oneself blind of one eye by closing it').
1751. Smollett, Peregrine Pickle, ch. ii. He . . . made wry faces, and, to use the vulgar phrase, cocked his eye at him, to the no small entertainment of the spectators.
1836. Marryat, Japhet, ch. iv. Timothy put on his hat, cocked his eye at me, and left us alone.
