coistrel
Americannoun
Etymology
Origin of coistrel
1570–80; Middle English custrell, apparently < Middle French coustillier, coustelier, one armed with a cou ( s ) telle dagger (feminine derivative of coutel knife < Latin cultellus; see -ier 2), with -r- perhaps from quystroun knave, page, scullion < Anglo-French ( Old French coistron < Vulgar Latin *coquistrō )
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.
He was himself a lord of language and had made himself a coistrel gentleman and he had written Romeo and Juliet.
From Ulysses by Joyce, James
Now sure this coistrel makes me smile, To see his greedy gaping thus for gain, First hardly got, then kept with harder pain, As you ere long by proof shall see full plain.
From A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 8 by Hazlitt, William Carew
The word is also confused with "coistrel" = "groom", "varlet"; cf.
From The Faerie Queene — Volume 01 by Spenser, Edmund
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.
