cog

cog

1. (international standards) ISO 639-3 language code for Chong.

• Wiktionary’s coverage of Chong terms

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: kŏg, IPA^(key): /kɒɡ/
• (General American) enPR: kôg, IPA^(key): /kɔɡ/
• (cot–caught merger) enPR: kŏg, IPA^(key): /kɑɡ/
• Rhymes: -ɒɡ, -ɔːɡ

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Inherited from Middle English cogge, from Old Norse *kogge, *koggr (see Old Swedish kogge, kogger), from Proto-Germanic *kuggō (“cog, swelling”), from Proto-Indo-European *gugā (“hump, ball”), from *gēw- (“to bend, arch”). Compare Lithuanian gugà (“pommel, hump, hill”).

Cognates includes: Swedish kugg, kugge (“cog tooth”), Norwegian kugg (“cog”). The meaning of “cog” in carpentry derives from association with a tooth on a cogwheel. Compare Old Swedish koggavidher (“cog wood”), “wood reserved for a millwheel”.

See also dialectal English cag (“stump”), keg; Old Norse kaggi (“keg”) +‎ -gi (diminutive suffix), from the Germanic base *kagô (“bush, branch, stalk, stump”); also found in Bavarian Kag (“the stalk or stem of a cabbage”); dialectal Swedish kage (“treestump; piece of wood; post”), kagg or kagge (“scythe handle”); Norwegian Nynorsk kage or kagge (“low lying bush, small tree”), dialectal kagg (“scythe handle”); Old English ċeacga (“broom, furze, gorse”), whence English chag (“branch”), also Old English cyċġel, English cudgel (“knotty club”). The ultimate origin could be related to English cog (“cargo boat”) (Dutch kogge), probably named for its “round swollen” appearance.

cog (plural cogs)

2. A tooth on a gear.
4. A gear; especially, a cogwheel.
   • 2025 November 12, David Stubbings, “Rail reform bill: pledge to rebuild trust of passengers”, in RAIL, number 1048, page 6:

     She said: " We're not wasting time. While the cogs of Parliament continue to whir, we will continue to work on the rolling stock and infrastructure strategy, the national transport integrated strategy, and our accessibility roadmap.

5. An unimportant individual in a greater system.

   just a cog in the machine

   • 1951, John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, published 1954, page 60:

     All the old problems, the stale ones, both personal and general, had been solved by one mighty slash. Heaven alone knew as yet what others might arise - and it looked as though there would be plenty of them - but they would be new. I was emerging as my own master, and no longer a cog.

   • 1976, Norman Denny (English translation), Victor Hugo (original French), Les Misérables

     ‘There are twenty-five of us, but they don’t reckon I’m worth anything. I’m just a cog in the machine.’

   • 1988, David Mamet, Speed-the-Plow

     Your boss tells you “take initiative,” you best guess right—and you do, then you get no credit. Day-in, … smiling, smiling, just a cog.

6. (carpentry) A projection or tenon at the end of a beam designed to fit into a matching opening of another piece of wood to form a joint.
7. (mining) One of the rough pillars of stone or coal left to support the roof of a mine.

cog (third-person singular simple present cogs, present participle cogging, simple past and past participle cogged)

1. To furnish with a cog or cogs.
2. (intransitive) Of an electric motor or generator, to snap preferentially to certain positions when not energized.

From Middle English cogge, from Middle Dutch kogge, cogghe (modern kogge), from Proto-Germanic *kuggō, from Proto-Indo-European *gugā (“hump, ball”) (compare Lithuanian gugà (“pommel, hump, hill”)), from *gēw- (“to bend, arch”). See etymology 1 above.

cog (plural cogs)

2. (historical) A partially clinker-built, flat-bottomed, square-rigged mediaeval ship of burden or war, with a round, bulky hull and a single mast, typically 15 to 25 meters in length, in use from ca. 1150 to 1500.
   • 1952, C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader:

     The name of the ship was Dawn Treader. She was only a little bit of a thing compared with one of our ships, or even with the cogs, dromonds, carracks and galleons which Narnia had owned when Lucy and Edmund had reigned there under Peter as the High King, for nearly all navigation had died out in the reigns of Caspian's ancestors.

3. (historical) The hypothetical precursor ship type of the above said to be in use during the early Middle Ages, variously alleged to be Frisian or Scandinavian.
4. (by extension) A small fishing boat.

Uncertain. Both verb and noun appear first in 1532.

cog (plural cogs)

1. A trick or deception; a falsehood.
   • 1602, William Watson, Quodlibets Religious and State:

     False suggestions, shamelesse cogs, and impious forgeries.

cog (third-person singular simple present cogs, present participle cogging, simple past and past participle cogged)

1. To load (a die) so that it can be used to cheat.
2. To cheat; to play or gamble fraudulently.
   • 1726, Jonathan Swift (debated), Molly Mog

     For guineas in other men's breeches, / Your gamesters will palm and will cog.

3. To seduce, or draw away, by adulation, artifice, or falsehood; to wheedle; to cozen; to cheat.
   • c. 1608–1609 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Coriolanus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii]:

     I'll mountebank their loves,
     Cog their hearts from them.

4. To plagiarize.
   • 1979, Tri-Quarterly, numbers 46-47, page 273:

     […] his themes and exercises were in constant demand for what we called cogging and American students rather grandly called plagiarization. Shakespeare and Eliot plagiarized; we grimly cogged in the early morning-oh, […]

   • 2006, Verve: The Spirit of Today's Woman, volume 14, numbers 4-6, page 51:

     Coming to journalism, how many of us have not been guilty at some stage of 'cogging' from other articles, […]

   • 1879, Dennis O'Sullivan, The Stirring Adventures of Corp'l Morgan Rattler‎^[1], F. Tousey, →OCLC, page 8:

     I wasn't able to translate two verses in Virgil or Homer , without “ cogging " from some fellow - student ; but I was eternally repeating passages from the poems of Byron , Moore , and Scott ; while I gloried in the soul - stirring ...

5. To obtrude or thrust in, by falsehood or deception; to palm off.

   to cog in a word

   • October 3, 1718, John Dennis, letter to S. T. , Esq; On the Deceitfulness of Rumour

     Fustian tragedies […] have […] been cogg'd upon the town for Master-pieces.

cog (plural cogs)

1. Alternative form of cogue (“wooden vessel for milk”).

cog (plural cogs)

1. (physics) Initialism of center of gravity

• CGO, OGC

A form of cok, with the frequent sonorizing of the ending oclusive in north-western dialects of Albanian.^[1]

• IPA^(key): /t͡sɔɡ/

cog m (definite cogu)

1. (regional, Malësi e Madhe) stepping stone, usually for entering an outer-door or porch

Back-formation from cogadh (“war”).

cog (present analytic cogann, future analytic cogfaidh, verbal noun cogadh, past participle cogtha)

1. (rare or archaic) to war, wage war

• Dinneen, Patrick S. (1904), “cog”, in Foclóir Gaeḋilge agus Béarla [Irish and English Dictionary], 1st edition, Dublin: Irish Texts Society, page 158

From Old French cogue, itself from Middle Dutch kogge.

cog

1. a ship of burden, or war with a round, bulky hull
   • 1470–1485 (date produced), Thomas Malory, “Capitulum iv”, in [Le Morte Darthur], book V, [London: […] by William Caxton], published 31 July 1485, →OCLC; republished as H[einrich] Oskar Sommer, editor, Le Morte Darthur […], London: David Nutt, […], 1889, →OCLC:

     As the Kynge was in his cog and lay in his caban, he felle in a slumberyng […].

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

• James A. H. Murray et al., editors (1884–1928), “Cog”, in A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Oxford English Dictionary), London: Clarendon Press, →OCLC.

Back-formation from cogadh (“war, fighting”).

cog (past chog, future cogaidh, verbal noun cogadh, past participle cogte)

1. fight

• IPA^(key): /koːɡ/
• Rhymes: -oːɡ

From Middle Welsh coc, from Proto-Brythonic *kog, ultimately imitative, similar to Old High German kā (“crow, jackdaw”), Middle Low German kâ (“crow, jackdaw”).

cog f (plural cogau)

1. cuckoo (Cuculidae)
   1. especially common cuckoo (Cuculus canorus)

      Synonyms: y gwcw, caethlydd, y gegid fechan, (Anglesey) gwcw llwydlas

• Cog is usually found preceded by the definite article, y gog.

From Middle Welsh coc, from Proto-Brythonic *kog, from Latin coquus.

cog m (plural cogau or cygod)

1. cook

   Synonym: cogydd

• coginio

• R. J. Thomas, G. A. Bevan, P. J. Donovan, A. Hawke, et al., editors (1950–present), “cog”, in Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru Online (in Welsh), University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh & Celtic Studies