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cot

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Pronunciation

cot1 small house, shelter

Etymology

The word for a small house is inherited from Middle English cot, also cote,[2][3] inherited from Old English cot (“cottage, house, bed-chamber, den”), plural cotu.[4][5][6] Old English also had cote in the same sense, the source of cote.[5][7][2] It is cognate with Middle Dutch cot, Dutch kot, Middle Low German kot and Old Norse kot (“hut”),[5][8][6][2] from Proto-Germanic *kutą.[8][6][9] Kroonen sees the Germanic noun in an ablaut relationship with words for a wickerwork hut and a basket.[9] The Shorter Oxford compares kytja (“hovel”),[7][10] and Barnhart traces the group to a word for the lowliest shelter, a lair or a covered hollow in the ground, from Proto-Indo-European *gudom.[8] Merriam-Webster sets beside it words for bowels and the throat, with a basic meaning "round, curved",[11] while Weekley thought it probably cognate with coat, from the idea of covering,[12] and Partridge suggested a Celtic origin.[13]

Earliest recorded meaning

A small house or cottage: in the Old English translation of Orosius,[5] about 893 in Barnhart's dating.[8] Old English used it also for a bed-chamber and for an animal's den.[4][8]

Semantic evolution

From about 1450 cot was also a small building put up for shelter or protection, for sheep or a bell, as in sheep-cot and bell-cot; in this sense it overlaps with cote.[5][7] A further sense, a case or protective covering such as a finger-stall or the cloth on a roller in a spinning frame, appears in 1617 and is now dialectal or technical.[5][11] Johnson (1755) defined the word as a small house, a cottage or a hut, with quotations from Spenser's Faerie Queene and Shakespeare.[14] As a word for a dwelling it is now chiefly poetic or literary, and suggests a small and humble house rather than a rough one.[5][7] In Scotland, Ireland and many English counties it was still used in the 19th century for a cottage or small dwelling-house.[15] The verb, to put sheep into a cot or keep them under shelter, is recorded from 1804.[5][7]

Timeline

  • c. 893 – Old English cot, a small house or cottage.[5][8]
  • c. 1450 – a small shelter for animals or for a bell.[5]
  • 1617 – a protective covering, a finger-stall.[5][7]
  • 1804 – verb, to put sheep into a cot.[5]

Meanings

Noun

  1. (literary) A small, simple cottage or hut: a shepherd's cot on the moor.[11][7][5]
  2. A small shelter for animals, a cote; also in compounds such as bell-cot.[11][7][5]
  3. A protective cover or sheath, especially for a finger.[11][7][5]

Verb

  1. To put animals, especially sheep, into a cot for shelter.[11][5][7]

cot2 light bed, camp bed, child's bed

Etymology

The word for a light bed is borrowed from Hindi खाट (khāṭ, “bedstead, couch, hammock, bier”), taken over in Anglo-Indian use in the early 17th century,[5][8][11][16] from Prakrit khaṭṭā, from Sanskrit खट्वा (khaṭvā, “bedstead”).[5][16][17][2] The Sanskrit word is probably of Dravidian origin, and the dictionaries compare a Tamil and Malayalam word for a bedstead.[8][16][11][2][18] Hobson-Jobson found the origin less simple: the English word was most at home as a sea term and in South India, where the Tamil and Malayalam word had been adopted by the Portuguese, and it noted Spanish catre, also Portuguese, for a bedstead, but held these forms to be of Indian origin.[19]

Earliest recorded meaning

A light bedstead in India: 1634, in Thomas Herbert's account of his travels.[5][8][11] Etymonline dates it to the 1630s,[18] and Dictionary.com to 1625–35.[17]

Semantic evolution

The Anglo-Indian word passed into naval use, and then to a child's swinging cot.[5] By 1769 it was a canvas bed in a frame hung from the deck beams for officers and sick men on board ship,[5][18][7] then from 1813 a small bed for a child, at first one hung so as to swing between uprights.[5][7] Weekley notes that the word was used from the 17th century in military and nautical senses, and that the child's cot is first recorded in Todd's dictionary.[12] From 1854 it was also a portable or folding bed,[5][18] a sense the Shorter Oxford marks as American,[7] then from 1874 a bed in a children's hospital, in the United States also a hospital bed or wheeled stretcher.[5][7] In northern India the English word was largely replaced by charpoy, but it stayed in use for barrack furniture and among soldiers and their families.[19]

Timeline

  • 1634 – Anglo-Indian, a light bedstead.[5][8][11]
  • 1769 – a swinging canvas bed on board ship.[5][18]
  • 1813 – a small bed for a child.[5] Etymonline dates this sense to 1818.[18]
  • 1854 – a portable or folding bed.[5][18]
  • 1874 – a bed in a children's hospital.[5]

Meanings

Noun

  1. (British) A small bed with high, barred sides for a baby or young child, the American crib: The baby slept soundly in her cot.[20][11][7]
  2. (chiefly US) A narrow, light bed that can be folded, a camp bed.[11][20][7]
  3. (India) A light bedstead, a charpoy.[11][5][20]
  4. (nautical, historical) A hammock-like bed of canvas on a frame, hung on board ship for officers and the sick.[11][20][7]
  5. (US) A hospital bed or wheeled stretcher.[11][7]

Word family

  • carrycot
  • cot death

Usage notes

Other words spelled cot are dialectal or technical: matted wool in a fleece, a word that came through Anglo-Norman;[5][7][11] a small flat-bottomed boat in Ireland, a borrowing of an Irish word;[5][7][15] and the abbreviation of cotangent in mathematics.[7][2]

References

  1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  3. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  4. ^ a b Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 32 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  6. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  9. ^ a b Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  10. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  11. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  12. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  13. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
  14. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  15. ^ a b Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
  16. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  17. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  18. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  19. ^ a b Yule, Henry; Burnell, A. C. (1903), Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, new ed. by William Crooke, London: John Murray
  20. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins