Cock: The compound cockcrow was already a… | etymologist.ai
cock
/kɒk/·noun·c. 700 CE — Épinal-Erfurt Glossary, where Old English 'cocc' glosses Latin 'gallus' (rooster); also attested in the Corpus Glossary (c. 800 CE)·Established
Origin
Old English cocc descends from Proto-Germanic *kukkaz, an onomatopoeic formation shared across the Germanic languages — Old Norse kokkr, Old Danish kok — naming the domestic rooster from the sound of its own crow, a word so fitted to its bird that four centuries of Norman French never dislodged it.
Definition
The adult male of the domestic fowl (Gallus gallus domesticus), from Old English cocc, continuing Proto-West Germanic *kokk and Proto-Germanic *kukkaz, a word of echoic origin imitating the bird's call, cognate across the North Sea Germanic dialects.
The Full Story
Old Englishc. 700–1100 CEwell-attested
The word 'cock' (male bird, rooster) derives from Old English 'cocc', attested from at least the 8th century CE in glossaries and ecclesiastical texts. The Old English form reflects Proto-Germanic *kukkaz, a word of probable onomatopoeic origin imitating the crow of a rooster — a cross-linguistic phenomenon seen in many unrelated language families. However, the Proto-Germanic reconstruction connects to a broader Indo-European root *keu- or *kok-, associated with sounds, humps, and roundedshapes, suggesting the name may have merged imitative and descriptive origins.
Under Grimm's
Did you know?
The compound cockcrow was already a fixed expression in Old English, used to name the pre-dawn watch of the night — centuries before it acquired any literary gloss. When Anglo-Saxon monks translated the Gospel account of Peter's denial, they needed no Latinborrowing; coccrǣd was already in the language, already the measure of the night's third watch. The bird crowed at the same hour on every Anglo-Saxon farm
as a herald of Ragnarök, using 'hani' rather than 'kokkr' for that mythological bird.
In Old English, 'cocc' is documented in the Épinal-Erfurt Glossary (c. 700 CE) and the Corpus Glossary (c. 800 CE), where it glosses Latin 'gallus'. The Vespasian Psalter (c. 825 CE) also uses the form. Middle English inherited 'cok' with predictable vowel developments, and the word stabilises in its modern spelling by the 15th century. The semantic scope was originally restricted to the domestic rooster (Gallus gallus domesticus), later generalising to other male birds and acquiring additional figurative senses in Middle and Early Modern English. Key roots: *keu- (Proto-Indo-European: "to sound, shout, cry; also associated with swelling or rounded shapes"), *kukkaz (Proto-Germanic: "rooster, male bird — onomatopoeic reconstruction from the crow"), cocc (Old English: "rooster, male fowl; earliest West Germanic attested form").