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cob, the head of a red herring. Dekker, Honest Wh., Pt. II. (Wks., 1873, ii. 147); ‘A herring cob, la teste d’un harang sor’, Sherwood.

cob, cobbe, a wealthy man; a miser; ‘Ryche cobbes’, Udall, tr. of Apoph., Diogenes, § 149; Stubbes, Anat. Abuses, ii. 27 (NED.).

cobbe, a male swan; ‘The hee swanne is called the cobbe, and the she-swanne the penne’, Best, Farm. Bks. (ed. 1856, p. 122). Hence cob-swan, B. Jonson, Catiline, ii. 1 (Fulvia). ‘Cob’ is still in use in Norfolk (EDD.).

cockal(l, a knucklebone of a sheep, with which boys played ‘knucklebones’. Herrick, The Temple, 59; the game played, Cotgrave (s.v. Tales). See Nares.

cockall, a paragon, a pattern, of supreme excellence; ‘He was the very cockall of a husband’, Marston, Antonio, Pt. I, iii. 2. 6.

cockatrice, a name for the basilisk, a serpent supposed to kill by its mere glance, and to be hatched from a cock’s egg. Bible, Isaiah lix. 5; Romeo, iii. 2. 47; applied to a woman of loose life, B. Jonson, Cynthia’s Rev. iv. 1; Killigrew’s Pandora (Nares). Orig. a name for the crocodile. OF. caucatris (cocatris), crocodile; Med. L. caucatrices, ‘crocodili’ (Ducange); cp. O. Prov. calcatris, crocodile (Levy). See NED.