colloq. [A derivative of COCK, app. playful and arbitrary. Cf., however, Du. kockeloeren to crow (Hexham).]
1. Applied to a person: = Little or young cock, bantam; self-important little man.
[1715. Jacobite Minstrelsy (1829), 47. Hey for Sandy Don! Hey for Cockolorum! Hey for Bobbing John, And his Highland quorum! [Cockolorum means the Marquis of Huntly, whose father, the Duke of Gordon, was called ‘Cock of the North.’]
1815–20. T. C. Carter, in Daily News, 7 Dec. 1889, 3/5. In my school days, from 1815 to 1820, we often heard in the playground: ‘Now little cockalorum, out o’ that.’
1871. R. Ellis, Catullus, liii. 5. He … Cried ‘God bless us! a wordy cockalorum!’
1881. Contemp. Rev., March, 437. Lord James Butler as high cockalorum of the Protestants.
2. Self-important narration; ‘crowing.’
1884. Pall Mall Gaz., 19 July, 4/2. Slovenliness with an unpleasant infusion of what has been known in his profession ever since the Franco-German war days as ‘cockalorum.’
3. Hey (hay, high) cockalorum: an ejaculation or exclamation; also a boy’s game in which one set of players jump astride the others (who present a chain of ‘backs’), calling out Hey cockalorum, jig, jig, jig! (Hey cockalorum jig! is given as refrain of a popular song c. 1800). High cockalorum jig: name of a game of cards.
1823. Galt, Entail, II. xxviii. 266 (Jam.). My lass, I’ll let no grass grow beneath my feet, till I hae gi’en your father notice o’ this loup-the-window, and hey cockalorum-like love.
1840. Barham, Ingol. Leg., Witches’ Frolic. Now away! and away! without delay, Hey Cockalorum! my Broomstick gay!
1857. Hughes, Tom Brown, I. iii. Prisoner’s-base, rounders, high-cock-a-lorum, cricket, foot-ball, he was soon initiated into the delights of them all.
