Also 6 copertyner, -pertener, -partener. [f. CO- + PARTNER: cf. COPARCENER.]
1. One who shares or takes part with others in any business, office, enterprise, or common interest; a fellow-partner, associate, accomplice. (Formerly = COPARCENER.)
1503. Hawes, Examp. Virt., vii. 148. And you of hym shall be copertyners.
1532. More, Confut. Barnes, VIII. Wks. 804/2. Felowes and coparteners with the holye aungels in the euerlasting inheritance.
1586. T. B., La Primaud. Fr. Acad., I. (1589), 34. He was led prisoner, for being a copartner in the conspiracie of Caius Gracchus.
1634. Sir T. Herbert, Trav., 74. Ioying little to be copartners with Infidels.
1667. Milton, P. L., I. 265. Th’ associates and copartners of our loss.
a. 1711. Ken, Hymnotheo, Poet. Wks. 1721, III. 127. Their co-partner in Delight.
1726. Amherst, Terræ Filius, iv. 18. I do not find, that, in this particular depredation he had any co-partners or accomplices.
1862. J. Spence, Amer. Union, 66. A copartner in that sovereignty of the people.
2. transf. of things.
1581. Mulcaster, Positions, vi. (1887), 40. The soule and bodie being coparteners in good and ill.
c. 1630. Drumm. of Hawth., Poems, 145. Hills, Dales, and Caves, Copartners of their Woe.
1634. T. Johnson, trans. Parey’s Chirurg., VI. xii. (1678), 128. The first [muscle] … together with its Co-partner draws it [the tongue] upwards.
† 3. A fellow; an equal; a match. Obs.
1591. Lyly, Sapho, I. ii. 162. Sapho for vertue hath no co-partner.
1660. Hickeringill, Jamaica, 37. Without a Co-partner, or any Parallel in any other Settlements.
