Talk:cock

misc

I am unsure of the usefulness of marking homophones, but if we are to do it, do we need a way of showing the situation (quite commonly encountered) where two words are homophones in some accents but not others? "Caulk" is by no stretch of the imagination a homophone of "cock" in most (all?) British English accents, in most of which (however) "caulk" and "cork" are actually homophones. So should we have "homphones: caulk (US)"? Or perhaps "caulk" and "cock" are homophones in some and not all US accents? Amatlexico

Hmm according to dictionary.com, which often gives both (US) pronunciations for such words, cock only has one pronunciation. But I don't know since I'm Australian. I've already added a couple of homophones in this way so I've ammended this one too in the way I think would be useful. Hippietrail 11:35, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Why is vagina given as one of the possible meanings of this word? Is this actually supported by slang dictionaries? It smacks of irony to me.

Karmosin 22:19, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

So am I to take from this that only people from the United States with negroid features use the word "cock" to mean a penis? This dictionary is absurd. 222.153.169.32 12:20, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

cock and vagina

I have no idea why the people from the south in the USA of both white and black would refer to the VaJJ as cock but I can assure you that they did. I'm from the north USA and was quite amused to hear them say "Lets go out tonight and get some cock". I admit this was some years ago however it was common all over the southern portion of the USA.

That’s true. Being from Texas, I didn’t know that cock meant penis until I joined the Army. It’s the reason that we could not understood how "cocksucker" could be a derogatory name for a man, since that was what most men fantasized about. —Stephen 10:28, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm several years late to this but it should be noted that this usage is borne out by the explicit version of "Shave 'Em Dry" by the blues singer Lucille Bogan, which is available on YouTube and such. Towards the end she refers to her "cock" in terms that make it clear she is referring to her lady-part rather than claiming to be male! Keresaspa (talk) 01:40, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

Here's the cite:

• 1935 March 5, Lucille Bogan, Shave 'em dry:

  I got nipples on my titties, big as the end of my thumb, / I got somethin' between my legs'll make a dead man come, / [...] And your dick stands up like a steeple, / [...] My back is made of whalebone, / And my cock is made of brass, / And my fuckin' is made for workin' men's two dollars[.]

- -sche (discuss) 03:34, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

Discussion continues at Wiktionary:Tea_room/2016/April#cock_meaning_vagina. - -sche (discuss) 03:59, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

She uses it again in the similarly themed "Till The Cows Come Home" BTW. Keresaspa (talk) 01:32, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

Indeed; here's that lyric, where she equates "cock" with "pussy":

• 1933(–35?), Lucille Bogan, Till the cows come home:

  I told him I gotta good cock / and it's got four damn good names:

  Rough top, / rough cock, / tough cock, / cock without a bone.

  […] If you suck my pussy, / baby, I'll suck your dick.

Stephen Cait's Barrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary, like Silverton, confirms that Bogan meant vagina. Cait says "It is not known how cock (which has stood for penis since c. 1600; cf. F&H, 1891) acquired" such a different sense. Various sources assert that it was in use since at least the 1920s, and remained until at least the 1960s. I have put a copy of the Tea Room thread below. - -sche (discuss) 17:21, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Tea room.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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On Talk:cock, one IP and one admin mention familiarity with an old Southern US usage of "cock" to mean "vagina", and another user provided (enough data that I tracked down) a citation of the usage from Lucille Bogan, where the meaning is confirmed by Peter Silverton, quoted here as saying "To [Bogan], what she had between her legs was a ‘cock’ – as it was for other southern [U.S.] women of her age, color and linguistic directness. [...] The female cock was a southern U.S. thing. It was the most common slang word for the vagina for a very long time. As late as the 1960s, in the southern states, ‘a piece of cock’ was a woman." Can anyone find more citations of this usage?
This site suggests it was in use at least as early as 1920, and "possibly derived from cockles; a cock-opener was a penis." It quotes the Dictionary of American Regional English (1985) as saying "At a point roughly the same as the Mason-Dixon Line, there is a division in meaning, to the North cock refers to the male genitals, but in the South its use is restricted to the female genitals. Missouri is a border state in which both meanings are used." Cassell's Dictionary of Slang also has it and derives it from French coquille.
- -sche (discuss) 03:57, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

I thought this was going to be incredibly hard to cite—dated regional slang spelled the same way as a much more common word with a related meaning. But actually, searching for "her cock" plus "ain't" on Google Books turned up a bunch of cites that look good. Here are some quotes from blues musician Piano Red; the commentary on pages 51-52 gives some more sociolinguistic information about this sense and derives it from cockle. And here is a quote from someone named "Mrs. H. K." (this book also says that the sense comes from French coquille). [1], [2], [3] also seem to be the sense we want. —Granger (talk · contribs) 19:54, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Wow! This is a good example of how many books are added to Google every year, since I waded through pages and pages of hits for "her cock" last year, when I made my most exhaustive effort to cite this, and didn't find anything relevant — I gave up on it as a search term and didn't (re)try it when I re-searched for this yesterday. It must also be an example of Google's weird location-dependent results, since some of those don't show up even when I search for exact phrases from them, though with a bit of a workaround I can see your links. Using your smart addition of "ain't" to "her cock", I do see African American Slang: A Linguistic Description, by Maciej Widawski, which asserts the term isn't even dated, giving examples from 1998 ("I stuck my fist up in her cock") through 2013 (a tweet). o.O I wonder why other references said it had fallen out of use. - -sche (discuss) 04:07, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure why it was removed, but I've re-added the meaning along with a footnote and two citations. It might be worth moving it to its own etymology (a separate derivation from coquille), but I'm not sure that the etymology is actually clear. grendel|khan 21:53, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Yikes, somehow I missed that it was already there. My mistake! grendel|khan 22:07, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Stupid

What would be an accurate definition of "cocking about" than just being stupid, this is a Top Gear quote so obviously the term is from england. The complete quote is : ' We are in fact on the cutting edge of cocking about"

"alt name for fucking around". — LlywelynII 11:57, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Hungarian

Well, 'kakas' was added to the translations that should be checked. It means rooster. So not every male bird, just rooster. But one of cock's meanings is rooster. Aargh, I know, and I think even you do, but I can't explain better. What should I do? Where should I put 'kakas'? --Ferike333 17:08, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

As you have it, under "male gallinaceous bird". Male gallinaceous bird could also mean a turkey tom, and so if kakas is only a male chicken, then you could put "(rooster only)" after it in parentheses. I really don’t think "cock" in English is usually applied to turkey toms either, but usually only to the male of any chicken species (including the little ones such as bantam). —Stephen 21:49, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Referring to a dog

Which sense fits this poem? I think it might just be a generic term for a person or individual, though it's a dog here. Equinox ◑ 20:03, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

• James Payn, On Our Dog Jock

  A rollicksome frolicsome rare old cock
  As ever did nothing was our dog Jock;
  A gleesome fleasome affectionate beast,
  As slow at a fight, as swift at a feast […]

Rooster

Difficult to search since cock obviously shows up in its additional senses. If people prefer cock be the main entry and have a good way of verifying it's still more common (It isn't where I'm from, but that may have to do with American prudishness), it's fine that the translations be listed here instead... but we should only have one list for male chicken/chickenish bird and not badly maintained duplicate lists like we had before. — LlywelynII 12:35, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

haycock

what meaning is used in haycock? --Backinstadiums (talk) 07:45, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

See cock#Etymology 3. —Granger (talk · contribs) 17:27, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

RFV discussion: December 2020–January 2021

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cock

Rfv-sense "the notch of an arrow"; an old out-of-copyright edition of the OED says that although several dictionaries have copied this sense from each other, "no evidence has been found for such a sense" and it appears to derive only from the assumption that Italian cocca (“notch of an arrow”) and the phrase "cock of a gun" imply that it would've existed in archery. That notwithstanding, it may have become a ghost word, in that I can find some occurrences of google books:"cock of an arrow", google books:"cock of a bow" in definitions of words in Welsh etc, at least some of which are arguably uses. (the glosses are short enough that it's very borderline / debatable). - -sche (discuss) 10:27, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

I am hesitant to use those dictionary definitions. The only other thing I could find was one quote in which it was used as a clipping of cock feather. Kiwima (talk) 20:54, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

The "cock" in "cocking a gun" seems to have a different origin anyway, at least according to a quick Google search. The OED currently considers the derivation from cocca to be a folk etymology. It mentions a possible connection with cock feather. Any chance that the "notch" meaning is just a misunderstanding of a clipping of cock feather? If someone (like Samuel Johnson writing his dictionary) didn't know much about archery, it seems conceivable to me that one might make an erroneous assumption about the meaning. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 05:31, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

RFV-failed Kiwima (talk) 20:32, 13 January 2021 (UTC)