Obs. Also 5 cok, 6 cokke, 6–8 cocke. [The compound cokbote varied in 15th c. with cogbote; and cokke, cocke itself agreed with one sense of COG; it is thus probable that the Eng. cogge, cocke, represented the Fr. variants cogue, coque: see COG sb.1 There was, however, more differentiation of the two forms in English than in French, for we have no trace of cock applied to the large vessels, COG sense 1; rather has cock always corresponded in sense to the Fr. diminutive coquet.
The Vocab. della Crusca has It. cocca ‘a kind of ship, no longer in use, which had the prow and the poop much raised, with a single mast, and a square sail’; dim. cocchetta. Of the similar Celtic words, Thurneysen says Ir. & Gaelic coca boat is the Romanic word; Welsh cwch is manifestly an old borrowed word; Cornish coc, pl. cucu, ‘boat’ is the Rom.-Eng. cock, and Breton koket, koked is the OFr. dim. coquet.]
A small ship’s boat. Now always COCK-BOAT.
1509. Will of Burgeys (Somerset Ho.). To Cristofer … a cokke to rowe yn.
1558. W. Tourson, in Hakluyt (1589), 123. I tooke our cocke and the Tygers skiffe, and went to the Island.
1569. Stocker, trans. Diod. Sic., III. xi. 122. Then the Tounssmen fraughte their cockes with drie wood and such like stuffe, and … cast fire into the shippes.
1605. Shaks., Lear, IV. vi. 19. Yond tall Anchoring Barke, Diminish’d to her Cocke: her Cocke, a Buoy.
1631. Chettle, Hoffman, C b (N.). I caus’d my Lord to leape into the cocke.
[1774. E. Jacob, Faversham, 80. No tenant shall have above one cocke to dredge and use in the river and fishing grounds.]
