hot cockles Obs. exc. Hist.
[f. hot a. + cockle ? n.2; origin of the name unknown.
(The F. hautes coquilles, alleged by Skinner, is a figment.)]
A rustic game in which one player lay face downwards, or knelt down with his eyes covered, and being struck on the back by the others in turn, guessed who struck him. Also attrib.
| 1580 Sidney Arcadia ii. (1629) 224 How shepheards spend their dayes, At blow point, hot cockles, or else at keeles. 1676 Marvell Mr. Smirke 13 They..leave men, as if it were at Hot-Cockles, to guesse blind-fold who it is that hit them. a 1708 Hickeringill Wks. (1716) I. 368 Upon pretence of Hot-cockles sport, or a Christmas-game. 1714 Gay Sheph. Week Monday 99 As at Hot-cockles once I laid me down, And felt the weighty hand of many a clown. 1823 H. Ravelin Lucubr. 303 Farmer Flamborough over his tankard..and his daughters..at hot-cockles upon the floor. |
† b. to sit upon hot cockles: to be very impatient, to ‘sit on pins and needles’. Obs. rare
| 1607 T. Walkington Opt. Glass 90 He..sits vpon hote cockles till it be blaz'd abroade. |
Hence (app.) † hot-cockled a., ? resembling a game of hot-cockles, as involving the infliction of strokes or buffets.
| 1549 Coverdale, etc. Erasm. Par. Phil. 3 In case throughe theyr earnest hoote cockled ghospellyng, they coulde haue broughte vs in to more haynous displeasure. |