cockboat
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of cockboat
1400–50; late Middle English cokboot, variant of cogboot, equivalent to cog boat, ship (akin to Old Norse kuggi small ship) + boot boat
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
"It would be more candid as well as more dignified," he said, "to avow our principles explicitly to Russia and France than to come in as a cockboat in the wake of the British man-of-war."
From Time Magazine Archive
He was but a free lance of the polished "Detrimentals," and, under this last adverse stroke of fortune, his poor cockboat was being swamped in the black waters of adversity.
From A Fascinating Traitor An Anglo-Indian Story by Richard Savage
My brother pointed out to me the Clermont, Fulton's trial steamer, then disused and lying at Hoboken, but a cockboat to the Diamond, which was one of the greatest successes of the day.
From The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I by William James Stillman
"In for a lamb, in for a sheep," thought I, and began to back the cockboat towards the corner where the dinghy lay.
From Poison Island by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
I swam with undulation soft, Adrift on Vischer's ocean, And, from my cockboat up aloft, Sent down my mental plummet oft, In hope to reach a notion.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 by Various
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
