coco--prophetes.ai

▪ I. coco, cocoa
    (ˈkəʊkəʊ)
    Forms: α. 6 cocus, 6–7 cocos; β. 6–7 coquo, (6 caco, coeco), 6– coco; γ. 7 coquer, cocar, cocker, 7–8 cokar, 7– coker; δ. 8–9 cocoa.
    [a. Pg. and Sp. coco; in 16th c. L. cocus. The early writers, from Cosmas 545 to the 15th c., knew it only as the Indian nut or ‘nut of India’; coquos (plural) is quoted first from the Roteiro de Vasco da Gama (Portuguese, 1498–9); Barbosa 1516 has (Pg.) quoquos; Pigafetta 1519 has (It.) coche pl. of coca; Oviedo 1526, Barros 1553, Garcia 1563, and Acosta 1578 have coco; Correa 1561 coquo.
    The Portuguese and Spanish authors of the 16th c. agree in identifying the word with Pg. and Sp. coco ‘grinning face, grin, grimace’, also ‘bugbear, scarecrow’, cognate with cocar ‘to grin, make a grimace’; the name being said to refer to the face-like appearance of the base of the shell, with its three holes. Historical evidence favours the European origin of the name, for there is nothing similar in any of the languages of India, where the Portuguese first found the fruit; and indeed Barbosa, Barros, and Garcia, in mentioning the Malayalam name tenga, and Canarese narle, expressly say ‘we call these fruits quoquos’, ‘our people have given it the name of coco’, ‘that which we call coco, and the Malabars temga’.
    In Eng. the latinized form cocus, afterwards (as in Bot. Latin) cocos, was at first used, both for sing. and plural. Towards the close of the 16th c. coquo, coco, as ‘the Portingalls cal this fruit’ (Linschoten), began to be used, with pl. cocos, cocoes. Coco remained the established spelling in the 18th c., till the publication of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary, in which the article Coco was (app. by some accident, for Johnson in his own writings used coco, pl. cocoes) run together with the article Cocoa (= Cacao); this gave currency to a confusion between the two words which still prevails, although careful writers have never ceased to use the correct form coco.
    Another spelling, coker, has been used, with various modifications since about 1620 (Purchas has cokers, Burton coquer-nuts); it appears to be from 17th c. Dutch koker-noot, and has long been in commercial use at the port of London to avoid the ambiguity of cocoa.
    The Greek words κοῦκι and κόιξ applied by Theophrastus, and, after him, by Pliny (cūci, coix), to certain palmaceous trees, have both been suggested as sources of the name, but without any ground, except their distant resemblance to coco. Connexion with Sp. coca, F. coche, and the family of L. concha shell is also philologically untenable.]
    † 1. a. = coconut below. Obs.

α 1555 Eden Decades W. Indies 194 (tr. Oviedo) This frute was cauled Cocus [the Italian version, Venice 1534, here translated, has coco] for this cause, that, when it is taken from the place where it cleaueth..there are seene two holes, and aboue them two other naturall holes, which altogether, doo represent the gesture and fygure of the cattes cauled Mammone, that is munkeys, when they crye: which crye the Indians caule coca. 1579 T. Stevens in Hakluyt Voy. (1589) 162 Wine of the Palme tree or of a fruite called Cocos. 1598 tr. Linschoten lvi. 100/1 The Indian nuts called Cocus. Ibid. 101/1 These Cocus being yet in their husks may be carried ouer the whole world. a 1600 Hakluyt Voy. III. 749 We found also a tree which beareth the fruite Cocos, which is bigger than a man's head, having within the utter coate, which is about 3 inches thicke, a certaine nut as bigge as two fists. 1605 Sylvester Du Bartas i. iii. (1641) 28/1 Th' Ile of Zebut's admirable Tree Beareth a fruit call'd Cocos commonly.

β 1582 Lichefield tr. Castaneda's Conq. E. Ind. 146 Cayro is the caske or rind of a nut they have in the India called Caco. 1598 tr. Pigafetta's Congo in Harl. Coll. II. 553 The Indian nuts called coecos, because they have within them a certain shell that is like an ape. 1598 tr. Linschoten lvi. 100/1 Vnder the leaues, close to the tree, grow the Coquos together. 1599 Hakluyt Voy. II. i. 251 Cayro which is threede made of the huske of Cocoes. 1686 Lond. Gaz. No. 2186/1, 12 Thousand Cocos with Balzome. 1708 Phil. Trans. XXVI. 191 They eat Coco's very freely. 1716 T. Ward Eng. Ref. 60 Tho' the Indians know no other Bread but of Cocoe. 1740 Johnson Life Drake in Gentl. Mag. X. 510 The Vallies extremely fruitful, and abounding with ripe Figs, Cocoes, and Plantains.

b. slang = 4 c. U.S.

1828 G. Godfrey Hist. G. Godfrey III. vii. 101 He finished, by telling..[Mr. Rafferty], that if he did not clap on his muzzle, he would give him a pelt on the cocoa, which should not leave him mag enough for a last dying speech. 1890 The Road (Denver) 24 May 8/1 What put that thought into your cocoa? 1910 Wodehouse Gent. Leisure xiii. 137 Who do you t'ink I nearly bumped me coco against out in de corridor downstairs?

2. a. The tropical palm-tree Cocos nucifera, which produces the coco-nut. More fully called coco-palm, coco-tree, and now more often coco(a)-nut tree.
Its native region is app. the tropical shores of the Indian and Pacific Oceans; nowhere indigenous in the Atlantic basin. ‘It seems certain that it was introduced by the Portuguese into Western Africa and the Cape Verde islands, and that it did not exist in the West Indies, Guiana or Brazil at the time of the discovery of America.’ Brande, Forest Flora of N.W. and Central India, 557.

α 1555 Eden Decades W. Ind. 194 A certeyne tree cauled Cocus beinge a kynd of date trees.

β 1744 J. Harris Collect. Voy. I. 56 Trees, which they guessed to be Cocos, and Palmitos. 1864 Tennyson En. Ard. 575 The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes.

γ 1621–30 [see coco-nut 4]. 1681 R. Knox Hist. Ceylon 15 These Leaves all grow on the top of the Tree after the manner of a Coker. 1712 tr. Pomet's Hist. Drugs I. 137 The Cokar furnishes the Work-Men with considerable Business.

δ 1744 Thomson Seasons, Summer 667 O let me drain the Cocoa's milky Bowl. 1755 Johnson, Cocoa. 1810 Southey Kehama iv. i, Reclined beneath a Cocoa's feathery shade.

b. In full coco(a)-grass: a plant of the sedge family (Cyperus rotundus), prevalent chiefly in southern U.S.; nut-grass.

1837 in J. R. Commons et al. Doc. Hist. Amer. Industr. Soc. (1910) I. 221 Cutting coco grass on the 22d. 1853 J. G. Baldwin Flush Times Alabama 72 It is a sort of cocoa grass that has got into the soil. 1874 U.S. Dept. Agric. Rep. 1873 269 Even the hardy and noxious gramineal plant, commonly called ‘coco’ in Louisiana, is destroyed. 1894 Congress Rec. 31 July 8049/1 That extraordinary grass known as cocoa grass, which has spread over large areas in the States of Louisiana and Mississippi. 1897 R. M. Stuart Simpkinsville 43 The blades of bright green cocoa spears. 1902 W. S. Gordon Recoll. Old Quarter 111 The floods, the irrepressible cocoa-grass, the poisonous vegetable exhalations are in his way. 1947 Jrnl. Wildlife Managem. Jan. 54/1 ‘Coco’ marsh, an association of ‘coco’ or salt-marsh bulrush, saltgrass, and ‘wire-grass’.

3. attrib. and Comb. coco-fibre, the fibre of the coco-nut husk; so † coco-cup = coco-nut cup, coco-cordage, coco-milk, etc.; coco-matting = coconut matting (4 d); coco-palm, coco-tree = sense 2; so coco-garden.

1598 tr. Linschoten lvi. 101/1 They put some of theer Cocus milk into it. 1613 Purchas Pilgr. v. xii, The Coquo-tree being the most profitable tree in the world. 1615 Sir T. Roe Jrnl., Junks..built, calk'd and rigged all out of the coco tree. 1630 Capt. Smith Trav. & Adv. xix. 37 [Elephants] will shake a great Cocar tree for the nuts. 1704 Collect. Voy. (Churchill) III. 719/2 Some Portugueses being got into a Coco-Garden. 1710 Steele Tatler No. 245 ¶2 Two Coco Cups. 1812 Southey Omniana I. 141 (heading), Cocoa Cordage. 1855 J. F. W. Johnston Chem. Com. Life I. 325 The cocoa palm..produces the palm wine, known in India..by the name of toddy. 1870 W. Robinson Wild Garden 229 To plant grass over a bed..would never do... I found a substitute in cocoa-fibre mixed with a good sprinkling of silver sand. 1881 Athenæum 24 Sept. 405/3 Coco-palm is the only correct way of spelling the name. 1883 Daily News 14 Sept. 2/7 A building used as cocoa-fibre manufactory. 1883 Peel City Guardian 7 Apr. (Advt.), Cocoa Mattings. 1920 D. H. Lawrence Lost Girl iii. 38 A hall..floored with cocoa-matting. 1958 C. S. Forester Hornblower in W. Indies 247 They make coco-matting by the mile in England now.

4. coconut, coco-nut, cocoa-nut, coker-nut. a. The nut or seed of the coco-palm; = coco 1. (Formerly cocoa-nut meant the cocoa-bean: see cocoa n. 4.)

β 1613 Purchas Pilgr. v. xiii. 437 Her chamber for the Palme, or Coquo-Nuts. 1662 Pepys Diary 16 July, I seeming to like a ring made of a coco-nutt with a stone done in it. 1712 E. Cooke Voy. S. Sea 255 A sort of Chesnuts, Coco-Nuts, Dates, etc. 1748 Anson's Voy. ii. v. 177 Her loading consisted of timber, cocao, coco-nuts. 1844 Hull Dock Act 121 Coco-nuts, per 100, 3d. 1852 Balfour Class-bk. Bot. 263 In the Coco-nut, in place of fleshy cells, woody fibrous ones are produced.

γ 1621 Burton Anat. Mel. i. ii. ii. iii. (1651) 77 One tree yields them Coquernuts. 1630 Capt. Smith Trav. & Adv. xix. 38 Cokar nuts and berries. 1635 Heywood Philocoth. 45 Cups made of..Cocker-nutts. 1681 R. Knox Hist. Ceylon 14 Here are also..Coker-nuts; Plantins also and Banana's. 1712 tr. Pomet's Hist. Drugs I. 137 The Cokar-Nut..grows..in the Spanish West-Indies. 1851 Mayhew Lond. Labour I. 89 Coker-nuts—as they are now generally called, and indeed ‘entered’ as such at the Custom house, and so written by Mr. M{supc}Culloch, to distinguish them from cocoa.

δ 1781 Cowper Lett. Aug. Wks. (1876) 79 We felt ourselves..obliged to you for the cocoa-nuts. 1870 Yeats Nat. Hist. Comm. 190 The cocoa-nut forms a considerable article of export from many of our colonies.

b. Used for coco-nut palm.

1852 Balfour Class-bk. Bot. 993 Certain palms are associated in large groups, as the Coco-nut. 1859 Tennent Ceylon I. 109 At the head of these palms is the Coco-nut.

c. The white flesh of the coconut, which may be eaten raw or used grated or dried as an ingredient in cooking. Also attrib.

1830 [see cocoanut cake below]. 1861 Mrs. Beeton Bk. Househ. Managem. 849 Whisk the eggs until they are very light; add the sugar gradually; then stir in the cocoa-nut. 1897 Sears, Roebuck Catal. 17/2 Special bargains in fancy candy... Fancy coca tablets, cocoanut center. 1909 [see coconut ice below]. 1928 L. Gilmour Bk. Recipes 170 Take 1 lb. of the prepared cream and into it knead 4 ozs. of ground coconut. 1951 M. Kuttel H. Duckitt's 650 Cookery Recipes 121 Cream the butter..then put in the cocoanut and stir well. 1978 J. Passmore All Asian Cookbk. (1979) 64/2 Make a paste of rice flour, egg, baking powder, salt and coconut.

d. In pugilistic slang, and humorously: The human head. (Cf. nut.)

1834 W. A. Caruthers Kentuckian I. 66, I rather suspicion he thought a two year old colt's heel had got a taste of his cocoanut. 1873 Slang Dict., Cocoa-nut, the head. A pugilistic term. 1885 Mrs. E. Lynn Linton C. Kirkland I. x. 269 You need not bother that silly cocoanut of yours.

e. attrib. or Comb., as coconut cake, coconut cup, coconut fibre, coconut man, coconut milk, coconut palm, coconut shell, coconut tree; coco-nut butter (see quot. 1890); coconut ice, a confection made from desiccated coconut and sugar; coconut matting, matting made of the fibre of the outer husk of the coco-nut; coco-nut oil, a whitish oil or fat obtained from the coco-nut; coconut shy, a sideshow at a fair in which contestants throw balls at coconuts placed in rings or cups in an attempt to dislodge them; coconut water, whey, applied to early stages of the milk of the coconut.

1890 The Grocer Feb. 8 In Amsterdam a factory is being started for the purpose of extracting from cocoa-nuts a substance styled *cocoa-nut butter.

1830 York Gaz. (Pa.) 6 July 1/3 He has just received a complete and general assortment..consisting of..Mint Drop, *Cocoanut Cake, and Lady Fancy's, &c. 1855 Mrs. Gaskell North & S. I. ix. 113 We will give him a welcome, and some cocoanut cakes. 1938 L. MacNeice I crossed Minch ii. xiv. 202, I bought and ate two coconut cakes.

1682 Lond. Gaz. No. 1721/1 His Excellency Presented her Highness..with 6 Silver Fillagreen Stands, made in the Indies, with *Coco-nut Cups set in Fillagreen. 1702 Lond. Gaz. No. 3806/8 Two large Coco Nut Cups footed and tipt with Silver.

1851 Illustrated Exhibitor p. xxxix/3 Mats of *cocoa⁓nut fibre. 1952 A. G. L. Hellyer Sanders' Encycl. Gardening (ed. 22) 122 Coleus... Propagation..cuttings of young shoots in light soil or coconut-fibre refuse at any time.

1909 Best Way' Bk. No. 2 71/2 *Cocoanut ice. Ingredients.—One and a half pounds of loaf or castor sugar, a quarter of a pound of grated or desiccated cocoanut, [etc.]. 1937 ‘R. Crompton’ William—the Showman v. 104 A small snub-nosed freckled boy with a perverted craving for cocoanut ice. 1960 Willmott & Young Family & Class iii. 88 Model hats and coconut-ice sold with immense enthusiasm.

1889 Catholic News 15 June 5/5 On Epsom Downs..a gipsy, a *cocoa-nut man, and some book⁓makers.

1854 F. Faber Let. in L. M. Trevor Newman (1962) II. 42 Blood and brains on ye *cocoanut matting of ye recreation room. 1870 Kingsley Madam How & Lady Why ix. 216 He lines them with a quantity of cocoa-nut fibre, picked out clean and fine, just as if he was going to make cocoa-nut matting of it. 1894 Daily News 24 May 5/4 Those members of the team [from South Africa] who have not previously been to England have not yet had sufficient time to become accustomed to the change from cocoa-nut matting wickets to turf.

1725 Sloane Jamaica II. i. iii. 41 The [grey Nicker] Beans beaten and us'd with *Coco-Nut Milk are good for Ruptures. 1932 J. R. Ackerley Hindoo Holiday i. 190 They [sc. tree-shrines]..are built to propitiate ghosts, spirits of the dead... Sacrifices of eggs and cocoanut milk were made.

1838 T. Thomson Chem. Org. Bodies 442 *Cocoa-nut oil..is obtained by expression from the kernel of the cocoa-nut. 1863–72 Watts Dict. Chem., Cocoa⁓nut oil..is imported in large quantities into Europe for the manufacture of soap.

1852 Balfour Class-bk. Bot. 936 The *coco-nut palm.

1664 Escaliot in Sir T. Browne Wks. (1852) III. 519 Cords made of *coconutt rinde.

1768 Rose in Phil. Trans. LX. 445 Their chief instrument being a large *cocoa nut-shell, strung with guts.

1903 ‘A. McNeill’ Egregious Eng. 175 Merry-go-rounds and *cocoanut-shies. 1922 D. H. Lawrence England, my England (1924) 55 In the cocoanut shies there were no cocoanuts.

1691 Ray Creation ii. (1704) 240 The *Coco or Coker-nut Tree. 1707 W. Funnell Voy. iii. 60 The Coco-nut Trees are from 50 to 60, 70, 80, and 100 Foot in height. 1861 Cleghorn in Edin. New Philos. Jrnl. xiv, On the Coco⁓nut tree and its uses.

1817 J. Williamson Obs. W. India Islands i. 96 As a refreshing and nutritious drink, *cocoa-nut water may be mentioned. 1883 Chambers's Jrnl. XX. 155/2 Cocoa⁓nut water, found in the green pod before the fibrous husk and nut as we know them here are formed.

1838 Mag. Dom. Econ. Feb. 254 The inhabitants give *cocoa-nut whey to their cattle.

5. double coco-nut, in Fr. coco-de-mer, coco-des-Maldives, the immense woody nut of a gigantic palm Lodoicea sechellarum, found native only on the small islands, Praslin and Curieuse, of the Seychelles group. The fruit weighs 40 or 50 pounds, is covered with a thick fibrous husk, and contains from one to three stones, or ‘nuts’, about 28 inches long, covered with excessively hard and thick black shells, each divided half-way down into two lobes, whence the name.
Before the discovery of these islands in 1743, the source of these nuts, which were often found floating on the Indian Ocean, or thrown up on the shores of the Maldive Islands, was enveloped in mystery and fable.

1827 Hooker in Curtis's Bot. Mag. LIV. 2734 Of all the palms perhaps that which for a long time has been the least perfectly known, and yet the most extensively celebrated, is..the Double Cocoa-nut. 1857 Henfrey Bot. 393 Large hollow double or triple nuts, of the same character as the Cocoa nut..the ‘Double Cocoa-nuts’ of the Seychelle Islands.

6. sea coco-nut of Jamaica: the fruit of Manicaria Plukenetii a palm of Trinidad and the adjacent mainland, often washed ashore at Jamaica. Called also sea apple, Fr. petit coco de mer.
▪ II. coco²
see cocco.