▪ I. ˈcockling, n.
[f. cock n.1 + -ling.]
A young cock; a cockerel. Also fig.
| 1580 Sidney Arcadia ii. (1622) 225 These coklings cockred we bewaile too late. 1870 Pall Mall G. 15 Aug. 11 The young cocklings immaturely and prematurely imitating the crow of their seniors. |
▪ II. cockling, vbl. n.1 dial.
(ˈkɒklɪŋ)
[f. cockle v.1 + -ing1.]
The action of becoming, or condition of being, puckered or wrinkled.
| 1552 Act 5 & 6 Edw. VI, c. 6 §1 Cockeling, bandoning, and divers other Great and notable Faults. 1691 T. H[ale] Acc. New Invent. 111 Occasioned by cockling and rising of the Lead into a ridge. 1803 Month. Mag. XV. 8 He mentions the word recoquillement..the old word cockling or cockling up..is an exact translation. a 1853 Lindley in Gardener's Chron., Its [glass's] thickness is so variable from the effects of cockling. |
▪ III. † cockling, vbl. n.2 Obs.
Cockering, pampering: see cockle v.3
▪ IV. cockling, vbl. n.3
[f. cockle n.2 + -ing1.]
Gathering cockles.
| 1790 Mrs. Wheeler Westmrld. Dial. (1821) 12, I doant like cocklin. 1865 Pall Mall G. 15 Aug. 3/2 When I came to the cockling-place. 1870 Ibid. 4 Jan. 8 A business largely followed on the coast of Lancashire, called ‘cockling’. |
▪ V. cockling, ppl. a.
[f. cockle v.1, v.2 + -ing2.]
1. That cockles or puckers.
| 1601 Act 43 Eliz. c. 10 The same Clothes..are found to shrinke, rewey, pursey, squally, cockling. |
2. Of the sea: Breaking into short irregular waves, tumbling, ‘chopping’.
| 1628 Digby Voy. Medit. (1868) 75 Verie foule weather, variable windes, and a growne cockling sea, the waues meeting from all sides. 1699 W. Dampier Voy. II. iii. v. (R.), In this passage between the said islands we find strange ripling and cockling seas, ready to leap on the ship's deck. 1773 J. Hawkesworth Voy. III. 650 There run a short cockling sea which must very soon have bulged the ship if she had strucke. 1793 Smeaton Edystone L. §288 There was such a cockling sea. 1847–8 H. Miller First Impr. v. (1857) 63 For acres together they present the phenomenon of a cockling sea of gardens—a rural Bay of Biscay agitated by a ground swell. |
† 3. Uneven, rising and falling; or, perhaps, unsteady, coggly, cockly. Obs.
| 1711 E. Ward Quix. I. 105 And on the Cockling dirty Stones Drop'd down upon his Marrow-Bones. |