Cockney

Cockney, a familiar name for a Londoner, the earlier meaning of which was a foolish, effeminate person, or a spoilt child. The original meaning is very obscure, but in Chaucer cokenay (a trisyllabic word) had much the same meaning as this. Professor Skeat points out its obscurity of meaning in two famous passages in Piers Plowman (x. 207), and in the last stanza of the 'Tournament of Tottenham' in Percy's Reliques. The word occurs twice in Shakespeare (Twelfth Night, IV. i. 15; and Lear, II. iv. 123), and there with the meaning, according to Schmidt, of a person who knows only the life and manners of the town, and is consequently well acquainted with affected phrases, but a stranger to what every child else knows. The French Pays de Cocagne, with which the word is usually connected, denotes a Utopia—an imaginary land of luxurious abundance without labour. The true origin of the word cockney has been much debated. The explanation of Wedgwood, followed by Skeat in his 'Errata,' connected it with the French coquin, 'a rogue;' itself, according to Littré and Scheler, derived through a Low Latin coquins from Latin coquus, 'a cook' or 'kitchen-scullion.' Diez doubted this, and assumed a connection with the old Norse kok, the throat. But according to Dr Murray, the word cockneye or cockenay means really cock's-egg, i.e. either simply a hen's egg or a diminutive hen's egg; then a 'nestle-cock,' a mother's darling, a cockered or pampered or effeminate person.