cog

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: kŏg, IPA^(key): /kɒɡ/
• (General American) enPR: kôg, IPA^(key): /kɔɡ/
• (cot–caught merger, Canada) enPR: kŏg, IPA^(key): /kɑɡ/
• Rhymes: -ɒɡ, -ɔːɡ

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Cogwheel showing the teeth (cogs).

From Middle English cogge, from Old Norse [Term?] (compare Norwegian kugg (“cog”), Swedish kugg, kugge (“cog, tooth”)), from Proto-Germanic *kuggō (compare Dutch kogge (“cogboat”), German Kock), from Proto-Indo-European *gugā (“hump, ball”) (compare Lithuanian gugà (“pommel, hump, hill”)), from *gēw- (“to bend, arch”).

The meaning of “cog” in carpentry derives from association with a tooth on a cogwheel.

cog (plural cogs)

1. A tooth on a gear.
2. A gear; a cogwheel.
3. An unimportant individual in a greater system.
   • 1976, Norman Denny (English translation), Victor Hugo (original French), Les Misérables

     ‘There are twenty-five of us, but they don’t reckon I’m worth anything. I’m just a cog in the machine.’

   • 1988, David Mamet, Speed-the-Plow

     Your boss tells you “take initiative,” you best guess right—and you do, then you get no credit. Day-in, … smiling, smiling, just a cog.

4. (carpentry) A projection or tenon at the end of a beam designed to fit into a matching opening of another piece of wood to form a joint.
5. (mining) One of the rough pillars of stone or coal left to support the roof of a mine.

cog (third-person singular simple present cogs, present participle cogging, simple past and past participle cogged)

1. To furnish with a cog or cogs.
2. (intransitive) Of an electric motor or generator, to snap preferentially to certain positions when not energized.

A modern replica of a cog (ship).

From Middle English cogge, from Middle Dutch kogge, cogghe (modern kogge), from Proto-Germanic *kuggō (compare German Kock (“cogboat”), Norwegian kugg (“cog (gear tooth)”)), from Proto-Indo-European *gugā (“hump, ball”) (compare Lithuanian gugà (“pommel, hump, hill”)), from *gēw- (“to bend, arch”). See etymology 1 above.

cog (plural cogs)

1. (historical) A clinker-built, flat-bottomed, square-rigged mediaeval ship of burden, or war with a round, bulky hull and a single mast, typically 15 to 25 meters in length.
   • 1952, C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader:

     The name of the ship was Dawn Treader. She was only a little bit of a thing compared with one of our ships, or even with the cogs, dromonds, carracks and galleons which Narnia had owned when Lucy and Edmund had reigned there under Peter as the High King, for nearly all navigation had died out in the reigns of Caspian's ancestors.

2. (by extension) A small fishing boat.

Uncertain. Both verb and noun appear first in 1532.

cog (plural cogs)

1. A trick or deception; a falsehood.
   • 1602, William Watson, Quodlibets Religious and State:

     False suggestions, shamelesse cogs, and impious forgeries.

cog (third-person singular simple present cogs, present participle cogging, simple past and past participle cogged)

1. To load (a die) so that it can be used to cheat.
2. To cheat; to play or gamble fraudulently.
   • 1726, Jonathan Swift (debated), Molly Mog

     For guineas in other men's breeches, / Your gamesters will palm and will cog.

3. To seduce, or draw away, by adulation, artifice, or falsehood; to wheedle; to cozen; to cheat.
   • c. 1608–1609 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Coriolanus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii]:

     I'll mountebank their loves,
     Cog their hearts from them.

4. To plagiarize.
   • 1979, Tri-Quarterly, numbers 46-47, page 273:

     […] his themes and exercises were in constant demand for what we called cogging and American students rather grandly called plagiarization. Shakespeare and Eliot plagiarized; we grimly cogged in the early morning-oh, […]

   • 2006, Verve: The Spirit of Today's Woman, volume 14, numbers 4-6, page 51:

     Coming to journalism, how many of us have not been guilty at some stage of 'cogging' from other articles, […]

   • 1879, Dennis O'Sullivan, The Stirring Adventures of Corp'l Morgan Rattler‎, F. Tousey, →OCLC, page 8:

     I wasn't able to translate two verses in Virgil or Homer , without “ cogging " from some fellow - student ; but I was eternally repeating passages from the poems of Byron , Moore , and Scott ; while I gloried in the soul - stirring ...

5. To obtrude or thrust in, by falsehood or deception; to palm off.

   to cog in a word

   • October 3, 1718, John Dennis, letter to S. T. , Esq; On the Deceitfulness of Rumour

     Fustian tragedies […] have […] been cogg'd upon the town for Master-pieces.

cog (plural cogs)

1. Alternative form of cogue (“wooden vessel for milk”)

• CGO, OGC

Back-formation from cogadh (“war”).

cog (present analytic cogann, future analytic cogfaidh, verbal noun cogadh, past participle cogtha)

1. (rare or archaic) to war, wage war

• Dinneen, Patrick S. (1904) “cog”, in Foclóir Gaeḋilge agus Béarla, 1st edition, Dublin: Irish Texts Society, page 158

From Old French cogue, itself from Middle Dutch kogge.

cog

1. a ship of burden, or war with a round, bulky hull
   • 1470–1485 (date produced), Thomas Malory, “Capitulum iv”, in [Le Morte Darthur], book V, [London: […] by William Caxton], published 31 July 1485, →OCLC; republished as H[einrich] Oskar Sommer, editor, Le Morte Darthur […], London: David Nutt, […], 1889, →OCLC:

     As the Kynge was in his cog and lay in his caban, he felle in a slumberyng […].

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

• Oxford English Dictionary, 1884–1928, and First Supplement, 1933.

Back-formation from cogadh (“war, fighting”).

cog (past chog, future cogaidh, verbal noun cogadh, past participle cogte)

1. fight

• IPA^(key): /koːɡ/

From Middle Welsh coc, from Proto-Brythonic *kog, ultimately imitative, similar to Old High German kā (“crow, jackdaw”), Middle Low German kâ (“crow, jackdaw”).

cog f (plural cogau)

1. cuckoo

• Cog is usually found preceded by the definite article, y gog.

• (cuckoo): cwcw

From Middle Welsh coc, from Proto-Brythonic *kog, from Latin coquus.

cog m (plural cogau or cygod)

1. cook

   Synonym: cogydd

• coginio

• R. J. Thomas, G. A. Bevan, P. J. Donovan, A. Hawke et al., editors (1950–present), “cog”, in Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru Online (in Welsh), University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh & Celtic Studies