Forms: 4– core; also 4–5 coore, 5–7 coare, (7 chore, choare, kore, quore), 7–8 coar. [Appears c. 1400, in senses 1, 2; core has been the prevailing spelling from the first. Etymology uncertain.
Minsheu conjectured ‘perhaps it hath its name from L. cor the heart, because it lieth in the middle of the fruit.’ Skinner pronounced it from F. cœur, It. cuore, L. cor,’ which has been repeated by most etymologists since. But the original meaning does not agree with any sense of the L. cor or Fr. cœur, and it was not app. till late in the 16th c. that any one thought of associating it with the notion of ‘heart.’ Moreover the OF. word was cuer, which in the end of 14th c. gave place to cueur, latinized after the Renascence to coeur, cœur. Other conjectures are that it represents F. corps (OF. also cors) body, or cor horn. Some support is given to the last by sense 3 (see esp. quot. 1580); but the persistent final e of the Eng. word is a great obstacle to any such derivation. The primary sense of core had formerly been expressed by COLK.]
I. Original literal senses.
1. The dry horny capsule imbedded in the center of the pulp and containing the seeds or pips of the apple, pear, quince, etc. (= COLK).
1398. Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., XVII. lxxxi. (Tollem. MS.). Som greynes beþ ordeynid in harde cores [ed. 1495 coares, L. in substantia callosa] within þe frute, as it fareþ in apples and in peres.
c. 1420. Pallad. on Husb., XI. 506. Take quynces ripe, and pare hem … but kest away the core. Ibid., III. 968.
c. 1440. Douce MS. 55. fo. 31. Pare hem & take oute the coore.
1481. Caxton, Myrr., II. i. 61. An Apple, whiche shal be parted by the myddle in foure parties right … by the core [par le moilon].
1578. Lyte, Dodoens, VI. xlii. 712. In the middle of the fruite [Pear] there is a Coare with kernels or peppins.
1601. Bp. W. Barlow, Defence, 138. The spottes of an apple about the quore.
1616. Surfl. & Markh., Country Farme, 423. Take your Quinces and pare them, and cut them in slices from the chore.
1671. Grew, Anat. Plants, I. vi. § 2. The Coar is originated from the Pith; for the Sap … quits the Pith, which thereby hardens into a Coar.
1678. Bunyan, Pilgr., I. Concl. None throws away the apple for the core.
1747. Wesley, Prim. Physick (1762), 41. Take a mellow Apple, take out the Core.
1887. Mrs. Burnett, Fauntleroy, xi. 216. He’d set there, an’ eat … apples out of a barrel, an’ pitch his cores into the street.
† b. fig. Something that sticks in one’s throat, that one cannot swallow or get over; also, in allusion to ADAM’S APPLE (sense 2), said of part of the original corrupt nature still remaining. Obs.
c. 1460. Play Sacram., 757. Lord I haue offendyd the in many a sundry vyse That styckyth at my hart as hard as a core.
a. 1569. Kingesmyll, Man’s Est., vi. (1580), 33. We are all choked with the core of carnall concupiscence.
1611. Speed, Hist. Gt. Brit., IX. iv. (1632), 468. This scruple was such a core in Anselm his mouth that he would not pronounce the words of Contract vntill [etc.].
c. 1630. Donne, Serm., lxiii. 631. The coare of Adams apple is still in their throat, which the blood of the Messias hath washt away in the righteous.
a. 1640. W. Fenner, Sacr. Faithfull (1648), 157. This will be a core to his conscience another day.
1652. Benlowes, Theoph., II. xvii. 25. Still in our Maw that Apples Core doth stick.
2. An unburnt part in the center of a coal, piece of limestone, etc. (= dial. cowk: see COKE, COLK.)
c. 1420. Pallad. on Husb., XI. 387. Askes of sarment Wherof the flaume hath lefte a core exile, The body so, not alle the bones, brent.
1840–56. S. C. Brees, Gloss. Civil Engin., 253. Lime core is unfit for making cement and mortar, but it is very serviceable as a dry filling at the backs of walls [etc.].
1876. Gwilt, Encycl. Archit., Gloss., Core … is also the interior part of a lump of lime, which has not been sufficiently burnt. In slaking lump lime these ‘cores’ will not disintegrate.
3. The more or less hard mass of dead tissue in the center of a boil. Formerly also app. a callosity or corn in the feet.
1532. More, Confut. Tindale, Wks. 351/2. So harde is [a] carbuncle, catching ones a core, to bee … cured.
1580. Hollyband, Treas. Fr. Tong, Vn Cor, a core in the feete.
1599. T. M[oufet], Silkwormes, 6. Healing bloudy wounds and festred coares.
1624. Quarles, Job Milit., E ij b. With Potsheards to scrape off those rip’ned cores … from out his sores.
1640–4. Sir B. Rudyard, in Rushw., Hist. Coll. (1692), III. I. 25. Now we see what the Sores are … let us be very careful to draw out the Cores of them.
1697. Dryden, Virg. Georg., III. 692. For ’till the Core be found, The secret Vice is fed, and gathers Ground.
1710. Lond. Gaz., No. 4772/4. His off Footlock before … troubled with Coars.
1807–26. S. Cooper, First Lines Surg. (ed. 5.), 65. (Boils) Under which is a mass of destroyed cellular membrane, called a core.
1856. Druitt, Surg. Vade M., 195. The discharge of a flake of softened lymph, and a small sloughy shred of areolar tissue … what is called a core.
† b. fig. of inward evil, ill feeling, etc. Obs.
1602. Marston, Ant. & Mel., III. Wks. 1856, I. 34. He would … drawe the core forth of impostum’d sin.
1619. W. Whately, God’s Husb., I. (1622), 66. He hath a sensible edge, and a kind of kore against those that stand betwixt him and this reputation.
1670. Cotton, Espernon, III. X. 525. They would never again be so fully reconcil’d, that there would not still remain a Core in the bosom of the one or the other.
1680. Otway, Caius Marius, V. ii. The Core and Bottom of my Torment’s found.
a. 1734. North, Exam., III. vi. § 7 (1740), 428. The Canker, or Coar, of the late Rebellion was torn out by this loyal Acknowledgment.
c. A disease of sheep, or a tumor characteristic of the disease. Also a disease in pigeons.
1750. W. Ellis, Mod. Husbandman, IV. i. 127. [Observe if the skin of the sheep] is clear from cores and jogs under the jaws.
1792. Osbaldiston, Brit. Sportsman, 121/1. Core, in pigeons, a malady so called from its likeness to the core of an apple.
1818. Todd, Core … 6. A disorder incident to sheep, occasioned by worms in their livers. Chambers.
1847–78. Halliwell, Core, a disease in sheep.
II. transf. A central portion that is cut out, or that remains after using the surrounding parts.
[App. the notion is taken from the core of fruit, which is cut out, or left uneaten.]
4. A central portion cut out and removed; esp. the cylindrical mass of rock extracted in the process of boring.
1649. Blithe, Eng. Improv. Impr. (1652), 97. Ant-hills … are best destroyed this way, being opened, the Soard taken up, and the Coare taken out, and scattered before the Plough.
1703. Moxon, Mech. Exerc., 223. Then with a Scmi-circular Tool loosen the whole Core, or middle of the Ball, and pitch the Core with the point opposite to the Center.
1810. Specif. Murdock’s Patent, No. 3292. 2. The cores cut out of the larger sorts of pipes I use as columns or … form them into smaller pipes.
1882. Standard, 24 Jan., 2/5. The Diamond Rock-boring apparatus … brings up solid cores of rock full of their characteristic fossils.
5. The remaining central portion of a mass from which the superficial parts have been cut or chipped away; e.g., of a hay-rick, and in Prehist. Archæol. of a flint nodule, whence flakes have been chipped for flint knives, etc.
1800. J. Hurdis, Fav. Village, 120. The sweet remnant of the hoarded rick Sliced to a core.
1862. Fairholt, Up Nile, 308. The square columns … have been in some places literally chipped to pieces and a rude irregular core only remains.
1863. Lyell, Antiq. Man, x. (ed. 3), 184. One of those siliceous cores or nuclei with numerous facets from which flint flakes or knives had been struck off.
III. transf. A central part of different character from that which surrounds it: chiefly technical.
6. generally.
1784. Johnson, in Boswell, Life (1816), IV. 353. This is a mere excuse to save their crackers…. The core of the fireworks cannot be injured.
1843. Rep. Brit. Association, 112. The patent substitute for corks and bungs is obtained by employing an elastic core of fibrous materials … and covering it with a thin sheet of India rubber.
1855. Bain, Senses & Int., I. ii. § 8. The spinal cord … a rod or column of white matter … enclosing a slender core of grey substance.
1863. Tyndall, Heat, ii. § 48 (1870), 46. Within the flame we have a core of gas as yet unburnt.
7. spec. a. Arch. The interior part of a wall or column (in this sense formerly often choar). b. Hydraulic Engineering. A wall or structure impervious to water, placed in an embankment or dike of porous material. c. The central portion of a window-lead or came connecting the leaf or part overlapping the edges of the glass.
1663. Gerbier, Counsel, 53. To fill the Choare of a wall … Several cracks in walls, whereof the Choares are hollow.
1823. P. Nicholson, Pract. Build., 309. The core of the rubble work of the Grecian walls is impenetrable to a tool.
1876. Gwilt, Encycl. Archit., Gloss. s.v., The core of a column is a strong post of some material inserted in its central cavity when of wood. Ibid., § 2229 a, An ancient lead of the usual width consisting of the leaf … and the core.
1884. Law Times Rep., LI. 229/2. The stuff of which the core of the wall was composed.
d. Hard core: see quots.
1851. Mayhew, Lond. Labour, II. 317 (Hoppe). The phrase ‘hard-core’ seems strictly to mean all such refuse matter as will admit of being used as the foundation of roads, buildings, &c.
1880. S. M. Palmer, in Macm. Mag., XLI. 252. Rough bits of all kinds of material, which goes by the name of ‘Hard Core.’
8. Founding. An internal mold filling the space intended to be left hollow in a hollow casting.
False core: a loose piece in the mold, used for producing a surface of hollowed or complicated form in the casting; called also a drawback.
1727–51. Chambers, s.v. Foundery, The inner mould, or core…. The use of the core in statues is to lessen the weight, and save metal.
1756. Dict. Arts & Sc., s.v. Foundery of Bells, The core … is made of bricks, breaking the corners without to give the masonry its exact rotundity.
1819. Reveley, Lett. to Shelley, 12 Nov. The melted metal … may run … into them, and fill up the vacant space left between the core and the shell.
1857. Lukis, Acc. Ch. Bells, 21. The inner mould or core … the shape of the inside of the bell.
1875. Ure, Dict. Arts, II. 472. The drawbacks, or false cores, made of sand pressed hard (and admitting of taking to pieces by joints).
9. The central bony part of the horn of quadrupeds (a process of the frontal bone); = COLK1 b.
1842. S. C. Hall, Ireland, II. 395. The slug or core on which the horn is moulded.
1859. Todd, Cycl. Anat., V. 516/2. Horns … having a position analogous … to that of the osseous cores of the Stags.
1880. Haughton, Phys. Geog., vi. 281. The skull was armed with two or three pairs of horn cores.
10. Electr. The bar or cylinder of soft iron forming the central part of an electro-magnet, or of an induction coil.
1849. Mrs. Somerville, Connex. Phys. Sc., xxxv. 377. The deep-seated magnetic contents of the globe … are just in the condition to act as a soft iron core to the currents round them.
1870. Tyndall, Lect. Electricity 4, note. The attraction exerted by electro-magnetic cores or bars of iron.
1881. Maxwell, Electr. & Magn., II. 287. An induction-machine without an iron core.
11. The central strand around which the other strands are twisted in a hawser-laid rope (also called heart). Also, the central cord of insulated conducting wires, around which the protecting wire sheathing is twisted, in a telegraph cable.
1849. Specif. A. Smith’s Patent, No. 12620. 2. A reel or bobbin from which the heart or core for the rope … is supplied.
1852. Mech. Mag., LVII. 392. R. S. Newall was the inventor of wire ropes containing a core of hemp … the application of this invention to electric telegraph rope is most obvious, for it is simply the substitution for the core of hemp of the core of gutta percha containing the electric wires.
1892. Sat. Rev., 27 Feb., 253. (Subm. Teleg.) It was for twenty-five knots of what electricians now call core—namely, copper wire insulated by a covering of gutta percha. In modern cables the core is always protected first by a serving of hemp or jute, and then by an outer sheath of soft steel wires.
IV. The central or innermost part, the ‘heart’ of anything.
In some of these uses ‘heart’ is of much earlier occurrence; e.g., in heovene hert c. 1300; the herte of Fraunce, Palsgr. 1530; hert of Oke, Fitzherbert 1525. The employment of core in similar senses appears to have come from the etymological notion of identifying it with L. cor, and thus with heart.
12. Applied to the heart of timber, etc., and in expressions thence derived.
1604. T. Wright, Passions, I. vii. 30. This face is the roote and kore where the Passions reside, but onely rhinde and leaves, which shew the nature and goodnesse of both the roote and the kore.
1728. Thomson, Spring, 122. Insect armies … wasteful eat Thro’ buds and bark, into the blackened core Their eager way.
1818. Scott, Battle of Sempach, x. The stalwart men of fair Lucerne … The pith and core of manhood stern.
1824. W. Irving, T. Trav., II. 259. One of the great trees, fair and flourishing without, but rotten at the core.
1882. Garden, 16 Sept., 251/3. One very large Abele tree, rotten at the core.
13. The innermost part, very center, or ‘heart’:
a. of a superficial area or thing material.
1614. Raleigh, Hist. World, I. 183. In the Core of the Square, she raised a Tower of a furlong high.
1857. C. Brontë, Professor, II. xviii. 17. The little plot of ground in the very core of a capital.
1860. Tyndall, Glac., I. § 23. 163. Masses of ice … disintegrated to the core.
b. of things immaterial; often with fig. reference to the core of a fruit or tree (as in sound or rotten at the core), or to a central nucleus as the seat of strength and resistance, or to the heart: cf. next.
1556. J. Heywood, Spider & F., lxxviii. 73. Of my tale the verie carnell or core Must stand on two points.
a. 1656. Bp. Hall, Rem. Wks. (1660), 419. But the core of all, is, that it sets too great a distance between us.
1675. Baxter, Cath. Theol., I. II. 62. This seemeth the very core of their error.
1804. Wellington, in Gurw., Disp., III. 585. Till that is effected, our system is rotten to the core.
1850. Tennyson, In Mem., cvii. Bring in great logs and let them lie, To make a solid core of heat.
1865. Baring-Gould, Were-wolves, iv. 52. There is a solid core of fact.
1874. Green, Short Hist., v. 215. The genius of Chaucer was … English to the core.
14. Used, with more or less conscious etymological reference, for ‘heart.’
[1570. Levins, 174. Ye Core of an aple, cor, cordis. Ibid., 217. Ye Couk of an opple, cor, cordis.]
1611. T. Momford, Pref. Verses in Coryat, Crudities. Well may his name be called Coryate … of the heart or very Cor of wit.
c. 1611. Chapman, Iliad, VI. 214. He … fed upon the core Of his sad bosom.
1816. L. Hunt, Rimini, IV. 219. Strike me to the core.
1840. Lytton, Pilgr. Rhine, iv. The desertion of his dog had touched him to the core.
b. Heart’s core: a Shakespearean expression, perh. orig. a play on core and Latin cor.
1602. Shaks., Ham., III. ii. 78. I will weare him In my hearts Core: I, in my Heart of heart.
1820. Keats, Lamia, I. 190. In the lore Of love deep learned to the red heart’s core.
1835. Marryat, Jac. Faithf., ii. Each sob coming from the very core of my heart.
1883. S. C. Hall, Retrospect, I. 361. He was a genuine antiquary to the heart’s core.
15. Comb. (chiefly in branch III), as core-bar, -lifter, -maker, -peg, -tube; core-barrel (Gunnery), a long cylindrical iron tube through which cold water is run, used in casting guns to cool them from the interior; core-box, a box in which a core is made in founding; core-piece, a piece forming a core; core-print, a projecting piece on a pattern to form a recess in the mold, into which the end of the core is inserted.
1848. Specif. of Wilson’s Patent, No. 12397. 12. I also claim the making of said cores by ramming vertically into *core boxes, around collapsing *core bars.
1857. Scoffern, etc. Useful Metals, 208. Cores for pipes … are built around a hollow cylindrical core-bar.
1874. Knight, Dict. Mech., s.v., The core is made in a core-box, and has projecting portions, known as core-prints, which rest in the prints of the mold.
1881. Mechanic, § 629. The use of this core-box … is to enable the iron founder to mould the core.
1884. Birmingham Daily Post, 24 Jan., 3/3. Wanted … *Coremaker, for Foundry.
1881. Greener, Gun, 181. The segments are then tied together, placed on a thin core-peg, put into a larger mould [etc.]. Ibid., 189. The *core-plug required in casting it [the bullet] in.
1857. Scoffern, etc. Useful Metals, 499. *Core-prints corresponding to the apertures of the connecting links [of a chain].
