subs. (colloquial).—One born within the sound of bowbells. [The origin of COCKNEY has been much debated; but, says Dr. Murray, in the course of an exhaustive statement (Academy, May 10, 1890, p. 320), the history of the word, so far as it means a person, is very clear and simple. We have the senses (1) ‘cockered or pet child,’ ‘nestle-cock,’ ‘mother’s darling,’ ‘milksop,’ the name being applicable primarily to the child, but continued to the squeamish and effeminate man into which he grows up. (2) A nickname applied by country people to the inhabitants of great towns, whom they considered ‘milksops,’ from their daintier habits and incapacity for rough work. York, London, Perugia, were, according to Harman, all nests of cockneys. (3) By about 1600 the name began to be attached especially to Londoners, as the representatives par excellence of the city milksop. One understands the disgust with which a cavalier in 1641 wrote that he was ‘obliged to quit Oxford at the approach of Essex and Waller, with their prodigious number of cockneys.’]
1607. DEKKER, Westward Ho! Act ii., Sc. 2. As Frenchmen love to be bold … and Irishmen to be costermongers, so COCKNEYS, especially SHE-COCKNEYS, love not aqua-vitæ when ’tis good for them.
1760. FOOTE, The Minor, Act i. But you COCKNEYS now beat us suburbians at our own weapons.
1840. THACKERAY, The Paris Sketch Book, p. 28. ‘You ’ad such an ’eadach’, sir,’ said British, sternly, who piques himself on his grammar and pronunciation, and scorns a COCKNEY.
1889. Pall Mall Gazette, 6 Nov., p. 3, col. 2. London mist, when turned into London black fog by the poisonous carbonic anhydride and sulphurous anhydride with which it is loaded, encompasses all COCKNEYS, good or bad with a real danger to health and life.
