COCK as vernacular pop adjectival

Douglas G. Wilson douglas at NB.NET
Mon Mar 22 00:13:06 UTC 2004


There is "cock" (adj.) in US English although I've only heard it rarely
myself, back around 1970 I think. It is in HDAS (sense 2). It is like
"cool" or "boss" or "dope" or ....

The Singaporean examples quoted on the 'insultmonger' site seem to give
"cock" as an English gloss for Fukienese "lan jiao" (= "penis") etc. I
don't know that an English adjective "cock" is being referred to here.

I believe Singapore-English "talk[ing] cock" = "talk[ing] nonsense" or so
(cf "poppycock").

I don't know for sure what "cock idea" means in the Ah Seng cartoon, but I
would tentatively take it to mean "nonsense idea" (cf. "cockamamie" [?]).

In some cases on the Web especially, "cock" may be a variant of -- or an
error for -- "cocky".

-- Doug Wilson



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