colloq. [f. COCK sb.1 + SHY v. or sb.]
1. Applied to cock-throwing and similar games with cocks.
[1794. Brand, Pop. Antiq., I. (1813), s.v. Shrovetide, The person who throws … has three shys, or throws, for two pence, and wins the Cock if he can knock him down and run up and catch him before the bird recovers his legs…. Broomsticks are generally used to shy with.]
1851. Mayhew, Lond. Labour, II. 55 (Hoppe). The shrovetide cockshy, or the duck-hunt.
1883. Globe, 22 March, 2/1. The populace took ‘cockshies’ at it … he who broke the vessel and liberated the bird being rewarded with it.
2. A free throw or ‘shy’ at an object set up for the purpose, as a form of amusement. Also transf. and attrib.
1836. Marryat, Japhet, lxvii. They proposed a cockshy, as they called it; that is, I was to place my articles on the top of a post, and they were to throw stones at them.
a. 1869. Ld. Strangford, Lett. & Papers, 215 (D.). This was as if the great geologists who then and there presided had invited two rival theorists to settle the question of a geological formation by picking up the stones and appealing to the test of a cockshy.
1883. J. Greenwood, Odd People in Odd Places, i. 6. One of the latter [i.e., donkey carts] being laden with cockshy sticks and cocoa-nuts.
3. The missile thrown. rare–1.
1837–40. Haliburton, Clockm. (1862), 189. The boy … threw his cock-shy at him with unerring aim, and killed him.
4. The object at which the ‘shy’ is made. Hence transf. A thing to throw at; an object of attack.
1836. E. Howard, R. Reefer, xxvi. What a fine cock-shy he would make!
1888. Times, 1 Oct., 4/1. It is never agreeable to either an individual or a body of troops to be made a sort of cockshy for an enemy.
5. The establishment of a strolling proprietor, where sticks may be thrown at coco-nuts or the like, for payment.
1879. Daily News, 7 April, 3/1. The tow-path is lined with people many deep, where the proprietors of ‘cockshies,’… and rifle galleries are driving a lucrative trade.
Hence Cock-shying, cock-throwing, playing at cockshy.
1870. Sir G. W. Dasent, Annals of an Eventful Life, I. 194. Flogging in the army, and bull-baiting, and cock-shying.
