Definition of "cog"

cog¹

/kɒɡ/

noun
plural cogs
1. A tooth on a gear.
2. A gear; a cogwheel.
3. An unimportant individual in a greater system.
  Quotations
  ‘There are twenty-five of us, but they don’t reckon I’m worth anything. I’m just a cog in the machine.’
  1976, Norman Denny (English translation), Victor Hugo (original French), Les Misérables
  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.
  1988, David Mamet, Speed-the-Plow
4. (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.
5. (mining) One of the rough pillars of stone or coal left to support the roof of a mine.
verb
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.

cog²

/kɒɡ/

noun
plural cogs
1. (historical) A 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.
  Quotations
  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.
  1952, C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
2. (by extension) A small fishing boat.

cog³

/kɒɡ/

noun
plural cogs
1. A trick or deception; a falsehood.
  Quotations
  False suggestions, shamelesse cogs, and impious forgeries.
  1602, William Watson, Quodlibets Religious and State
verb
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.
  Quotations
  For guineas in other men's breeches, / Your gamesters will palm and will cog.
  1726, Jonathan Swift (debated), Molly Mog
3. To seduce, or draw away, by adulation, artifice, or falsehood; to wheedle; to cozen; to cheat.
  Quotations
  I'll mountebank their loves,Cog their hearts from them.
  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, [Act III, scene ii]
4. To plagiarize.
  Quotations
  […] 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, […]
  1979, Tri-Quarterly, numbers 46-47, page 273
  Coming to journalism, how many of us have not been guilty at some stage of 'cogging' from other articles, […]
  2006, Verve: The Spirit of Today's Woman, volume 14, numbers 4-6, page 51
  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 ...
  1879, Dennis O'Sullivan, The Stirring Adventures of Corp'l Morgan Rattler‎, F. Tousey, page 8
5. To obtrude or thrust in, by falsehood or deception; to palm off.
  Quotations
  Fustian tragedies […] have […] been cogg'd upon the town for Master-pieces.
  October 3, 1718, John Dennis, letter to S. T. , Esq; On the Deceitfulness of Rumour

cog⁴

/kɒɡ/

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

Definition of "cog"

cog1

noun

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verb

cog2

noun

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cog3

noun

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verb

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cog4

noun

cog¹

cog²

cog³

cog⁴