Sc. and dial. [Derivation unknown.]
1. Quiet, still.
17[?]. Gay Goss-hawk, xiii. (Minstr. Sc. Border). He … sang fu’ sweet the notes o’ love, Till a’ was cosh within.
1847–78. Halliwell, Cosh, quiet, still. Salop.
1881. Autobiog. J. Younger, iv. 34. John Wallace had sat as cosh as a mouse in the corner. Ibid., xxiii. 284. All was hushed as cosh as midnight.
Mod. Sc. Keep it cosh! Be cosh about it.
2. Sheltered, snug, comfortable.
a. 1774. Fergusson, Farmer’s Ingle. Blythe to find … That a’ his housie looks sae cosh and clean.
1813. E. Picken, Poems, I. 124 (Jam.). I’ve guid gramashens worn mysel’ … They kept me cosh baith cauf an’ coots.
1837. R. Nicoll, Poems (1842), 82. Beside our cosh hearthstane.
3. Trim, neat.
1826. J. Wilson, Noct. Ambr., Wks. 1855, I. 93–4. They come flocking in…—their bosoms made cosh and tidy.
1832–53. Whistle-Binkie (Sc. Songs), Ser. I. 37. The coshest wife that e’er I met, Was Mistress Dougal Dhu.
4. (See quot.)
1808. Jamieson, Cosh … 4. In a state of intimacy; ‘They are very cosh.’
