COTE - Google Books - Hamlet
Word nerd mode
Playing on Aerolith, word study program to practice anagramming words for Scrabble - couldn't anagram COTES at all (ESCOT, COSET) - kept making up phony stuff.
The OSPD says COTE is a verb meaning "to pass by". I think of it as French with a circumflex (hat) over the o to mean "side".
Found this on Google Book Search. I searched for books published 1600 to 1850 and found a wonderful answer, an annotated edition of Hamlet that explains the relation to the French word "côte". It says the connection is from dog racing, when a greyhound passes by the side of another greyhound.
http://books.google.com/books?id=IPEjAAAAMAAJ&dq=coted&pg=PA287#v=onepage&q=coted&f=false
It took way longer to type about it than it took to find the reference.
Conclusion - Google book search is awesome.
Playing on Aerolith, word study program to practice anagramming words for Scrabble - couldn't anagram COTES at all (ESCOT, COSET) - kept making up phony stuff.
The OSPD says COTE is a verb meaning "to pass by". I think of it as French with a circumflex (hat) over the o to mean "side".
Found this on Google Book Search. I searched for books published 1600 to 1850 and found a wonderful answer, an annotated edition of Hamlet that explains the relation to the French word "côte". It says the connection is from dog racing, when a greyhound passes by the side of another greyhound.
http://books.google.com/books?id=IPEjAAAAMAAJ&dq=coted&pg=PA287#v=onepage&q=coted&f=false
It took way longer to type about it than it took to find the reference.
Conclusion - Google book search is awesome.