adj. (colloquial).—Confidently certain; pertly sure. [Probably a corruption of ‘cocky sure.’ We call a self-confident, overbearing prig a cocky fellow, from the barnyard despot. Shakespeare (1 Henry IV., ii. 1) employs the phrase in the sense of ‘sure as the cock of a firelock.’

        We steal as in a castle, COCKSURE:
and still earlier usages imply its derivation from the fact that the cock was much surer than the older fashioned match.]

1

  1549.  LATIMER, Sermon on the Ploughers, p. 32 (ARBER’S ed.). For the Deuyll was dysapoynted of his purpose for he thoughte all to be hys owne. And when he had once broughte Christe to the crosse, he thought all COCK-SURE.

2

  1603.  JOHN DAY, Law Trickes, Act iii., p. 39.

        Then did I learne to …
Make false conueyances, yet with a trick,
Close and COCK-SURE, I cony-catch’d the world.

3

  1667.  DRYDEN, Sir Martin Mar-all, Act. iv. Nothing vexes me, but that I had made my game COCK-SURE, and then to be backgammoned.

4

  b. 1738, d. 1819.  WOLCOT (‘Peter Pindar’), Odes to the Pope, II., in wks. (Dublin, 1795) V. ii., p. 492. Yet deem themselves, poor dupes, COCKSURE of Heav’n.

5

  1837.  R. H. BARHAM, The Ingoldsby Legends (Aunt Fanny), (ed. 1862), 320.

        Last of all, gentle Reader, don’t be too secure!—
Let seeming success never make you ‘COCK-SURE!’

6

  1849.  T. CARLYLE, IV., 108. [Yes, Manning was shot there; he had told us Hyde was COCKSURE.]

7

  1884.  W. C. RUSSELL, Jack’s Courtship, ch. iii. ‘Hawke will not get his daughter to have him, he may be COCKSURE of that.’

8

  1889.  The Star, Aug. 24, p. 3, col. 4. In his most insolent and COCKSURE manner he declared, etc.

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