Category: Word of the Day – C

ETYMOLOGY
from crab (the common name of the wild apple) + stick

EXAMPLE (for n. 2.)
“… Yes, I remember. I was remarking that sangaree and calipash, mangoes and guava jelly, dispose the heart to love, and so they do. I was not more than six weeks in Jamaica when I felt it myself. Now, it was a very dangerous symptom, if you had it strong in you, for this reason. Our colonel, the most cross-grained old crabstick that ever breathed, happened himself to be taken in when young, and resolving, like the fox who lost his tail and said it was not the fashion to wear one, to pretend he did the thing for fun, determined to make every fellow marry upon the slightest provocation. …”

From: Charles O’Malley
The Irish Dragoon
By Charles Lever, 1840

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin coævus (of the same age),
from co- + ævum (age) + -ous

EXAMPLE
“… Finally, the Tetrad connects all Beings, of Elements, Numbers, Seasons of the Year, Coaevous Society; neither can we name any thing, which depends not on the Tetractys, as its Root and Principle: …”

From: The History of Philosophy: containing the lives, opinions, actions and discourses of the philosophers of every sect
By Thomas Stanley, 1660

ETYMOLOGY
from churl +  -y

EXAMPLE
“… But all this while, the shop where Jonah sleeps,
Is tost, and torne, and batter’d on the deeps,
And well-nigh split upon the threatning Rock,
With many a boystrous brush, and churley knock.
God help all desp’rate voyagers, and keepe
All such, as feele thy wonders on the deepe. …”

From: Divine poems: containing the History of -Jonah. Ester. Job. Samson.; Sions – sonets. Elegies.
By Francis Quarles, 1638

ETYMOLOGY
formed from Old English clibbor (sticky, adhesive); 
related to Old English clifian (to cleave, adhere)

EXAMPLE
“… Which tother spying well, hotly pursues his poynt,
And each proffred resistance, chops off ioynt by ioynt,
Threatning, insisting, striking, wounding, reuelling,
Till meeke disarm’d stilnes proclaim’d his conquering:
Then clibbie ladder gainst his battered flanck hereares,
And vp it him, and he it vp, slow scaling beares. …”

From: A Herrings Tayle
By Richard Carew, 1598

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin claudicare,
from claudus lame

EXAMPLE
“… Toss’d, half the night, as Vulcan a whole morn,
No Lemnian there to catch the wretch forlorn;
Till his last step to claudicate in gait,
Like him halt, hobble, and hallucinate! …”

From: The Vestriad: A Poem
By Hans Busk, 1820
Canto IV. The Descent.

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin coinquinat- participial stem of coinquinare (to defile all over),
from co- (together) + inquinare (to defile)

EXAMPLE
“... For the wele publyke
Of preesthode in this case
And alwayes to chase
Suche maner of sysmatykes
And halfe-heretykes
That wolde intoxicate
That wolde conquinate
That wolde contemminate
And that wolde vyolate
And that wolde derogate
And that wolde abrogate
The churche hygh estates…”

From: Colyn Cloute
By John Skelton, a1529

ETYMOLOGY
from clod (lump) + pate (head)

EXAMPLE
“… VVHat Clod-pates, Thenot, are our Brittish swains,
How lubber-like they loll upon the plains?
No life, no spirit in ’em; every Clown
Soone as he layes his Hook and Tarbox down,
That ought to take his Reed, and chant his layes,
Or nimbly run the winding of the Maze,
Now gets a bush to roam himselfe, and sleepe;
Tis hard to know the shepheard from the sheepe. …”

From: By Thomas Randall/Randolph
in: Annalia Dubrensia, vpon the yeerely celebration of Mr. Robert Dovers Olimpick Games vpon Cotswold-Hills, 1636
Edited by Alexander Grosart, 1877

ETYMOLOGY
apparently originally from cock (an edible bivalve mollusc found on the coasts of Britain, probably a cockle, obs.) + bell

EXAMPLE (for n. 2)
“… My beard had sometimes yce on it as big as my little finger, my breath turning into many cock-bells as I walked…”

From: The Bargrave MS. Diary, 1645
in A Dictionary of the Kentish Dialect and Provincialisms in use in the County of Kent
By William Douglas Parish, & William Francis Shaw, 1887

ETYMOLOGY
from corky (flighty, frivolous) + noddle (head)

EXAMPLE
“… She’s no farouchie nor furfluther’d,
No tetherfaced, thrawnmou’t, nor touthert;
Nae corkynoddle runk wi’ crawtaes. …”

From: Dorothea M. Ogilvy’s “Poems“, 1873;
Willie Wabster’s Wooing

ETYMOLOGY
apparently from clapper (the tongue of a bell) + dudgeon (hilt of a dagger): 
the origin of the appellation is unknown.
John P. Collier (writer and scholar) suggests ‘from his knocking the clapdish (which beggars carried) with a knife or dudgeon’.