cocky
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: note: of the US
ipa: /ˈkɒki/
note: of Canada
ipa: /ˈkɑki/
ipa: /ˈkɔki/
ipa: /ˈkɒki/
rhymes: -ɒki
Forms: form: cockier
form: cockiest
form: cockey
form: cockie
Etymology: From cock (“male domestic chicken”) + -y (suffix forming adjectives with the sense of ‘having the quality of’).
Senses: examples: text: And now I think I may be cocky, / Since fortune has ſmurtl'd on me, / I'm Jenny, an' ye ſhall be Jockie, / 'Tis right we together ſud be; [...]
ref: 1794, Alexander Ross; [Joseph Ritson, compiler], “Song XXVII. What Ails the Lasses at Me. […] [Billet by Jeany Gradden.]”, in Scotish Songs. In Two Volumes, volume I, London: Printed for J[oseph] Johnson, […]; and J. Egerton, […], →OCLC, page 246:
text: Pretty girls, indeed, can with impunity, menace their lovers with quitting them; but cocky Waithman, will, if he try it often, soon find, that he cannot play such tricks without having to repent of it.
ref: 1819 November 13, W[illia]m Cobbett, “To Henry Hunt, Esq.”, in Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, volume 35, number 12, London: Printed and sold by William Benbow, […], →OCLC, column 376:
text: You are a cockie chap to go again a man axing where and what you 'a been when you are axing a place, [...]
ref: 1876, [Sarah Tytler, pseudonym of Henrietta Keddie], “What She Came Through”, in Donald McLeod, editor, Good Words, volume XVII, London: Daldy, Isbister & Co. […], →OCLC, chapter XII (A New Day’s-Man at the Manor), page 250:
text: Hodges has made a great fool of himself, by getting gradually cockier and cockier.
ref: 1881 November 29, Ernest Mason Satow, “[Letter to William George Aston]”, in Ian Ruxton, editor, Sir Ernest Satow’s Private Letters to W. G. Aston and F. V. Dickins: The Correspondence of a Pioneer Japanologist from 1870 to 1918: […], [Morrisville, N.C.]: Lulu Press, published 5 February 2008, →ISBN, page 66:
text: I wasn't the least bit proud. I dare say I was one of the least cocky creatures in existence these days.
ref: 1996, Knut Hamsun, translated by Sverre Lyngstad, Hunger, Edinburgh: Canongate Books, →ISBN; republished Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2016, →ISBN:
text: When Yvette came out of the bathroom, I said baby turn on the cd player. For what the only singing you gonna hear is your own when I get up in you. She's getting cockey I thought.
ref: 2008, V. Montrell Jones, The Grass is Bluer on the Other Side, [Bloomington, Ind.]: Xlibris, →ISBN, page 75:
text: The confidence that was temporarily humbled now returned with a cockier attitude.
ref: 2008, Gerard Thomas, Nightwarrior Chronicles: All Girls′ Team, [Bloomington, Ind.]: AuthorHouse, →ISBN, page 85:
text: No more being cockie. This is, as of now, an official operation. I do not take anymore chances for foolish reasons. I have to do this job absolutely right the first time. This is the only shot any of us are going to have, I'm afraid.
ref: 2009, D. K. Hale, chapter 8, in Curiosity is Deadly, [Bloomington, Ind.]: Xlibris, →ISBN, page 112:
text: You smiling your oh-so-perfect smile and me with the biggest, cockiest grin on my face you can ever imagine. I would have been the cockiest man alive that night knowing you were going home with me.
ref: 2011, Melanie Harvey, chapter 30, in Indispensable Friendship & Death Collide, [Bloomington, Ind.]: Xlibris, →ISBN, page 204:
synonyms: word: airy
word: arrogant
word: authoritarian
word: biggity
word: big-headed
word: blustery
word: boastful
word: bombastic
word: buggish
word: cocky
word: conceited
word: disdainful
word: domineering
word: egotistical
word: entitled
word: flatulent
word: flaunting
word: full of oneself
word: grandiose
word: hankty
word: haught
word: haughty
word: haut
word: high-handed
word: high-hat
word: high and mighty
word: highfalutin
word: hoity-toity
word: holier-than-thou
word: imperious
word: inflated
word: insolent
word: la-di-da
word: ostentatious
word: overbearing
word: overweening
word: pompous
word: presumptuous
word: pretentious
word: priggish
word: puffed up
word: sanctimonious
word: self-important
word: snobbish
word: snooty
word: snotty
word: stout
word: stuck up
word: supercilious
word: thrasonic
word: thrasonical
word: toploftical
word: toplofty
word: tumid
word: turgid
word: uppish
word: uppity
word: uppy
word: upstage
word: vain
glosses: Overly confident; arrogant and boastful.
Derived terms: cockily
cockiness