cocking

Pluralcockings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of cock.

   Cocking the hammer of an old revolver takes a firm thumb.

   She stood by the mirror, cocking her hat at a jaunty angle before the party.

   Note

   One form carries a verb with very different lives. Cocking a gun or crossbow lifts its cock to ready it for firing; cocking a hat tilts it to one side, often boastfully. In British and Irish slang it can also mean having sex with someone or, by extension, wrecking something, so it needs care. All of these go back to cock, the rooster, a word with many derivatives.

2. 2
   adjectivevulgar

   Offensive or worthless, used as a vulgar curse in front of a noun.

   Get that cocking dog off my lawn before it digs up the flower beds.

   The cocking machine swallowed my last five dollars and gave me nothing.

   Similarbloody, damn, fucking, sodding

   Note

   A vulgar intensifier that sits in front of a noun and adds anger rather than meaning: Neil Kurtzman's Doing Nothing (2000) has "Son of a cocking bastard." Its force comes from cock in its coarse sense, the penis, and it belongs only in speech meant to offend. It does not grade, so nothing is ever more cocking than anything else.

3. 3
   nounobsoletecountable or uncountable

   The sport of cockfighting, or a single gathering held for it.

   Gamblers rode in from three counties to bet on the cocking at the fairground.

   The magistrate tried to ban cockings, but the farmers kept holding them in out-of-the-way barns.

   Note

   An obsolete name for the sport and for a single meeting held for it. The European Magazine, and London Review of 1792 places it in a gambler's world, describing a man who kept company with sharpers and "attended cockings and races." Modern English says cockfighting, or a cockfight for one bout, so a reader today is likelier to hear readying a gun in the word.

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