cock up
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.23 in modern English
16
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "It was cocking her up with gimcrack notions about ladies till she'd be ashamed to look at her own hands after she had done a day's work with them."
- "I'd take the stick to his back and beat him while I could stand over him—as I done many a time before. The mother, you know, she cocks him up with this and that. . . ."
Etymology
The first citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from the Dictionary of Forces' Slang (1948). The OED suggests that it derives ultimately from the noun cock, but gives no further detail. The nature of the earliest citation suggests that this expression entered the wider language from military slang, making etymologies from typesetting or archery (see alternate meanings of cock-up) unlikely. One proposal is that the phrase originated describing an arrangement of the yards of a square-rigged vessel in port. Modern folk etymology has sometimes suggested that "cock-up" refers to a male erection, or to the phrase "cacked up", but neither is supported.