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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Warming the cackles of the heart conjures up cartoon Wiccans amusing their cardiac systems on blasted heaths, but has little else to recommend it. The acorn itself is no better though, unless that tiny bivalve really reminds you of a heart. The thought that such a small thing could keep me alive is giving me palpitations; given the choice I’d sooner have my blood moved about by something more on the scale of a giant clam.
I’m not sure why, there’s just something about massively violent storms that truly warms the cackles of my heart. I was actually born during a hurricane too …
Things like that warm the cackles of my heart, they tell me that we CAN all get along together, especially if we work towards a common goal. ...
It warms the cackles of my heart a little bit and I just tend to think of a person’s Karma when they behave badly and selfishly. ...
Doesn’t that grandmotherly face just warm the cackles of your heart? This is my favorite picture. I love the beautiful, handmade quilt…and the union suit …
Michael Quinion discusses the original on his “World Wide Words” site, adding:
It may be that the shape and spiral ribbing of the ventricles of the heart reminded surgeons of the two valves of the cockle. But I can’t find an example of the word cockle being applied to the heart outside this expression, which makes me suspicious of this explanation. It may be that the shape of the cockleshell, suggesting the heart as it so obviously does, gave rise to cockles of the heart as an expansion.
After this piece appeared in the Newsletter, James Woodfield pointed out that there is another possible explanation. In medieval Latin, the ventricles of the heart were at times called cochleae cordis, where the second word is an inflected form of cor, heart. Those unversed in Latin could have misinterpreted cochleae as cockles, or it might have started out as a university in-joke. Oddly, cochlea in Latin is the word for a snail (from the shape of the ventricles — it’s also the name given to the spiral cavity of the inner ear), so if this story is right we should really be speaking of warming the snails of one’s heart.
I found that last bit particularly interesting as cockly can mean nauseous in several dialects, or unstable, as when a chair or something similar is not standing on all four legs, and cochlear damage or malfunction affects balance and can cause nausea. Unfortunately I can’t find this use of ‘cockly’ in any online dictionaries, but the word is alive and well:
Cockly: unstable, not standing firm on legs or wheels,’Watch out if you sit on that, it’s a bit cockly
I’m a bit cockly – sickly. Coin – to turn: you could coin round the corner on your bike. Cotty – hair needs cutting. Coup yor kreels – do somersault …
i have allways been cockly,but since i had salmone… ... If cockly means you usually feel in poor health, you could have Lupus, diabetes, ADEM, Crohn’s. ...
What I want to know if anyone has had this procedure what did you go for as I am really unsure which to go for, Im really cockly with things like this and …
Last edited by Peter Forster (2009-07-21 12:05:01)
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Peter Forster wrote:
Warming the cackles of the heart conjures up cartoon Wiccans amusing their cardiac systems on blasted heaths, but has little else to recommend it.
Surely that’s enough!
Walter Skeat’s An etymological dictionary of the English language, from 1882, provides a nice background on cockly:
COCKLE (3), to be uneven, shake or wave up and down. (C.) ‘It made such a rough cockling sea … that I never felt such uncertain jerks in a ship;’ Dampier, Voyage, an. 1683 (R.) Formed as a frequentative, by help of the suffix -le, from a verb cock or cog, to shake, preserved also in the prov. E. coggle, to be shaky (Halliwell); cf. prov. E. cockelty, unsteady, shaky. W. gogi, to shake, agitate; whence also prov. E. gogmire, a quagmire (Halliwell). Cf. also Gael. gog, a nodding or tossing of the head, goic, a tossing up the head in disdain; Irish gog, a nod, gogach, wavering, reeling.
(http://books.google.ca/books?id=A4M_AAA … t&resnum=8)
Incidentally, Skeat is one of the many old word books that can be downloaded (link). Nothing to goic at.
Is it just me, or could one devote an entire thread to eggcorns based on cock cognates?
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No and definitely, and I’m sure it’s a theme we’ll be returning to again. Thanks for the link – I should have been able to find those but it’s hard being a barely reformed Luddite – and I’ve just found a way of accessing the full OED so my cup it overflows.
“Goic” sounded familiarish and yes, it apparently persists as geck, meaning unchanged, in Northern parts, but I can’t actually remember hearing it.
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