The verb cozen has a doubtful ancestry. One plausible etymology has cozen associated with the noun cousin (i.e., the relative), modeled on the French usage of the verb cousiner to call cousin, i.e., to claim fraudulent kindred to gain some profit or advantage. A second etymology derives cozen from Italian cozzonare to engage in horse trading, cheat, from cozzone, from Latin 釵棗釵喧勳紳-, the inflectional stem of 釵棗釵喧勳 a dealer, broker. Cozen entered English in the 16th century.
He had come to cozen me into letting him use me in return for a mockery of an honor.
Let us cozen it with a golden shrewdness.
noun
twilight; dusk; the beginning ofevening.
Evenfall, “the beginning of evening, dusk,” from its very look is a poetic word. It is reasonable to assume, but impossible to prove, that evenfall was modeled on the earlier nightfall (1700). Evenfall entered English in the 19th century.
And now ’tis evenfall in the brave and beautiful Borderland, and long shadows fall across the smooth lawns and fragrant garden …
James Turner had his own conception of what happiness was … Mine is to smoke a pipe at evenfall and watch a badger, a rattlesnake, and an owl go into their common prairie home one by one.
Halidom is a rare word meaning holy place, sanctuary. Its Old English form, 堯櫻梭勳眶餃鳥, is a compound formed of the adjective 堯櫻梭勳眶 holy and the abstract noun suffix -餃鳥 (English -dom). 晨櫻梭勳眶餃鳥 originally meant holiness, sanctity in Old English, but this sense was obsolete by the 17th century. The concrete senses of 堯櫻梭勳眶餃鳥, “chapel, sanctuary and relic, are as old as the abstract sense. Halidom entered English before 1000.
Most nations would reckon it a village, but it had its halidom, assembly hall, market, and busy little industries.
There are few more interesting spots in Great Britain than “Dewisland,” or the “halidom” of St. David.