Forms: 6 cooson-, 6–7 coson-, couson-, coosin-, cousin-, coosnage, 6–8 cosen-, 7 cosin-, coozen-, cousnage, 7–8 cousen-, couzen-, 8 coz’nage, 6– cozenage. [f. COZEN v. + -AGE. In form originally identical with COUSINAGE, whence many word-plays. The most usual 17th-c. spellings were cousenage, couzenage; cozenage has prevailed since c. 1710.]
The practice or habit of cozening; cheating, deception, fraud; the fact of being cheated.
1583. Stubbes, Anat. Abus., II. 48. Dissimulation, coosonage and guile.
1598. Barret, Theor. Warres, V. i. 148. Whosoeuer shall vse any shifting, or cosenage … or any maner of false play.
1614. T. Adams, Devil’s Banquet, 31. Iudas [cannot] swallow downe his cousenage and treason.
1679. Dryden, Troilus & Cr., V. ii. Forces us to pay for our own cozenage.
1709. Steele, Tatler, No. 15, ¶ 4. The Arts of his Mind, Cousenage and Falshood.
1821. Byron, Two Foscari, IV. i. The old Doge … smiled on him With deadly cozenage.
1850. Whipple, Ess. & Rev. (ed. 3), I. 105–6. We observe many queer developments of the cozenage of language.
b. (with a and pl.) An act of cozening; a deception, a fraud; a result or embodiment of cozening, a piece of deception.
1592. Nashe, P. Penilesse (ed. 2), 27 a. In Playes, all coosonages … are most liuely anatomized.
1594. Lyly, Moth. Bomb., I. i. Then you shall see an exquisite coosnage.
1624. Heywood, Gunaik., IV. 186. One that for cousenages and forgeries had lost his eares.
1686. J. Scott, Chr. Life, III. (1696), 141. His Frauds and Cozenages appear like Specters at his Door.
1881. W. C. Russell, Ocean Free-Lance, III. i. 2. The spectral face … was no cozenage of the lad’s fancy.
¶ In the following there are plays on or allusions to COUSINAGE.
1600. Rowlands, Lett. Humours Blood, vii. 83. Brotherhood once in kindred bore the sway, But that dates out, and Coosnage hath the day.
1628. Wither, Brit. Rememb., I. 1161. There is no kin, but Cousnage.
Cozenage2, obs. f. of COUSINAGE.
