Obs. [f. COG v.3]
1. The act of cogging at dice; a particular method or way of doing this.
[In quot. 1598, taken by some to mean ‘false dice for cogging’; but it is coupled with ‘devices’ and ‘shifts.’]
1532. Dice Play (1850), 28. There be divers kinds of cogging, but of all other the Spanish cogg bears the bell, and seldom raiseth any smoke.
1598. Greene, Jas. IV., II. i. Sold a dozen of devices, a case of cogs, and a suit of shifts.
1617. Machivell’s Dogge, Sign. B. Lett’s go to dice awhile … But subtill mates will simple mindes … blinde … with … cogges and stoppis, and such like devilish tricks.
a. 1658. Cleveland, Publ. Faith, 7, Wks. 1699, 200. What way? Doublets? or Knap? The Cog? low Dice? or high?
b. An act of cogging or cheating. nonce-use.
1855. Browning, Holy Cross Day. See to our converts—yon doomed black dozen—No stealing away—nor cog nor cozen!
2. A deception, trick, fraud, imposture.
1602. W. Watson, Quodlibets Relig. & State, 7. False suggestions, shamelesse cogs, and impious forgeries.
1618. Barnevelt’s Apol., G iij b. Tis a meere cogge, that the King of France offered by his Embassadours the reliefe of an hundred thousand crownes monethly.
1630. J. Taylor (Water P.), Kicksey Winsey, Wks. II. 37/2. These men can … shake me kindly by the fist, And put me off with dilatory cogges.
3. Cant. ‘The money or whatever the sweetners drop to draw in the bubbles’ (Dict. Cant. Crew, c. 1690); hence app. applied to coin or pieces of money generally.
1532. Dice Play (1850), 27. To know … what money he hath in his purse, and whether it be in great coggs or small, that is, gold or silver.
1673. R. Head, Canting Acad., 192. He … drops down a Cog in the street.
c. 1690. B. E., Dict. Cant. Crew, Drop a cog, to let fall (with design to draw in and cheat) a Piece of Gold; also the piece itself.
1725. in New Cant. Dict.
1729. Gay, Polly, III. Wks. (1772), 198. Furies! a manifest cog! I wont be bubbled.
4. Comb. † cog-foist, a cheat; † cog-shoulder, [? formed on the vb.-stem], a kind of arrest.
1604. Middleton, Black Bk., Wks. V. 540. The villainous nature of that arrest which I may fitly term by the name of cog shoulder.
1606. Wily Beguiled, in Hazl., Dodsley, IX. 239. A sack to have put this law-cracking cogfoist in.
Cog sb.5 A wooden vessel: see COGUE.
