cough
Part of speech: verb
noun
intj
Morphological type: simple
Topics: medicine
sciences
Etymology: From Middle English coughen, coghen (“to cough; to vomit”) [and other forms], from Old English *cohhian (compare Old English cohhetan (“to bluster; to riot; to cough (?)”)), from Proto-West Germanic *kuh- (“to cough”), ultimately of onomatopoeic origin.
Cognates
* Middle Dutch cuchen (“to cough”) (modern Dutch kuchen (“to cough”); German Low German kuchen (“to cough”))
* Middle High German kûchen (“to breathe (on); to exhale”), kîchen (“to breathe with difficulty”) (modern German keichen, keuchen (“to breathe with difficulty; to gasp, pant”))
* Spanish cof (“coughing sound”)
* West Frisian kiche (“to cough”), kochelje (“to cough persistently”)
Inflected forms:
form: coughs
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: coughing
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: coughed
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: coughed
pos: verb
tags: past
form: no-table-tags
pos: verb
tags: table-tags
form: glossary
pos: verb
tags: inflection-template
form: cough
pos: verb
tags: infinitive
form: cough
pos: verb
tags: first-person
present
singular
form: coughed
pos: verb
tags: first-person
past
singular
form: cough
pos: verb
tags: present
second-person
singular
form: coughest
pos: verb
tags: archaic
present
second-person
singular
form: coughed
pos: verb
tags: past
second-person
singular
form: coughedst
pos: verb
tags: archaic
past
second-person
singular
form: coughs
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: cougheth
pos: verb
tags: archaic
present
singular
third-person
form: coughed
pos: verb
tags: past
singular
third-person
form: cough
pos: verb
tags: plural
present
form: coughed
pos: verb
tags: past
plural
form: cough
pos: verb
tags: present
subjunctive
form: coughed
pos: verb
tags: past
subjunctive
form: cough
pos: verb
tags: imperative
present
form: -
pos: verb
tags: imperative
past
form: coughing
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: coughed
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: coughs
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: Sometimes followed by up: to force (something) out of the lungs or throat by pushing air from the lungs through the glottis (causing a short, explosive sound), and out through the mouth.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: Sometimes she coughed up blood.
Jeeves coughed one soft, low, gentle cough like a sheep with a blade of grass stuck in its throat, and then stood gazing serenely at the landscape.
gloss: To cause (oneself or something) to be in a certain condition in the manner described in etymology 1 sense 1.1.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: He almost coughed himself into a fit.
gloss: To express (words, etc.) in the manner described in etymology 1 sense 1.1.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: No ſtationary ſteeds / Cough their ovvn knell, vvhile heedleſs of the ſound / The ſilent circle fan themſelves, and quake.
gloss: To surrender (information); to confess.
pos: verb
tags: figuratively
transitive
gloss: Chiefly followed by up: to give up or hand over (something); especially, to pay up (money).
pos: verb
tags: figuratively
slang
transitive
examples: By the time you get back the men will all be striking out for the fire, and we'll break for the house and collar the dollars. Everybody cough up what matches he's got.
Thanks to Jeeves I was not going to be called on to cough up several thousand quid.
"Parsloe, will you or will you not cough up that pig?" / "I have not got your pig."
gloss: To push air from the lungs through the glottis (causing a short, explosive sound) and out through the mouth, usually to expel something blocking or irritating the airway.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: I breathed in a lungful of smoke by mistake, and started to cough.
Yet notwithſtandyng all this geare, / thou cougheſt ſtill, perdy / Ye are a craftie knaue, you cough / to fare deliciouſly.
Leave procreants alone, and ſhut the dore, / Coffe, or cry hem, if any body come, […]
"Did your lordship's servant see Simon Glover and his daughter?" said Henry, struggling for breath, and coughing, to conceal from the Provost the excess of his agitation.
But often, when thy face [i.e., that of a horse] is turned from the stable, thou hast an unaccountable desire to place it in the position occupied by thy tail: thou stoppest, coughest, shyest, and erst, with swift detorsion, turnest round, then, with sidelong glance of my magic caduceus, ominously wagging between the horizon and thy ample sides, I incite thee on, but rarely does thy pace more than trot, from home.
Tossivi / Tu tossais / Thou coughedst
After this he fell a-coughing violently, and Stanbury thought it better to leave him.
"But it is unfortunate—you find me at the moment—" and he stopped short and coughed.
I drew a deep breath, and a moment later wished I hadn't, because I drew it while drinking the remains of my gin and tonic. “Does Kipper know of this?“ I said, when I had finished coughing.
gloss: To make a noise like a cough.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: The engine coughed and sputtered.
Wake up, by-and-by, and look to see what done it, and maybe see a steamboat, coughing along up stream, so far off towards the other side you couldn't tell nothing about her only whether she was stern-wheel or side-wheel; then for about an hour there wouldn't be nothing to hear nor nothing to see—just solid lonesomeness.
gloss: To surrender information; to confess, to spill the beans.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
slang
gloss: A sudden, often involuntary expulsion of air from the lungs through the glottis (causing a short, explosive sound), and out through the mouth.
pos: noun
examples: Behind me, I heard a distinct, dry cough.
[I]t conduceth helpe to the crudities, humidities, and vvindineſſe of the ſtomacke and belly, and to helpe the ſhortneſſe of breath and coughes: […]
The lumpiſh husband ſnoar'd avvay the night, / Till coughs avvak'd him near the morning light.
Dwining ventured to give a low cough once or twice, by way of signal; […]
One saint's day in mid-term a certain newly appointed suffragan-bishop came to the school chapel, and there preached on “The Inner Life.” He at once secured attention by his informal method, and when presently the coughing of Jarvis and another boy interrupted the sermon, he altogether captivated his audience with a remark about cough lozenges being cheap and easily procurable.
Jeeves coughed one soft, low, gentle cough like a sheep with a blade of grass stuck in its throat, and then stood gazing serenely at the landscape.
gloss: A bout of repeated coughing (verb etymology 1 sense 2.1); also, a medical condition that causes one to cough.
pos: noun
examples: whooping cough
Sorry, I can’t come to work today—I’ve got a nasty cough.
[John] Fal[staff]. VVhat diſeaſe haſt thou? / [Peter] Bul[lcaff]. A horſon cold ſir, a cough ſir, vvhich I cought vvith ringing in the Kings affaires vpon his coronation day ſir.
Cough! you don't need to tell me about a cough. I've always been subject to a cough, all my days. […] O! Eva's cough is not anything.
gloss: A noise or sound like a cough (etymology 2, noun sense 1).
pos: noun
tags: figuratively
gloss: A vocalisation from a bird or other animal resembling a human cough.
pos: noun
gloss: Used to represent the sound of a cough (noun sense 1), especially when focusing attention on a following utterance, often an attribution of blame or a euphemism: ahem.
pos: intj
examples: He was—cough—indisposed.
Derived words: cough down
cougher
coughing
coughingly
cough out
cough over
cough up
cough and a spit
cough attack
cough button
cough candy
cough capsule
cough drop
cough drug
cough expectorant
cough fracture
cough impulse
cough linctus
cough lolly
cough lozenge
cough medicine
cough mixture
cough muscle
cough pill
cough preparation
cough reflex
cough reliever
cough remedy
cough suppressant
cough sweet
cough syncope
cough syrup
cough tablet
cough tea
cough test
coughy
hiccough
Holocough
soften someone's cough
upper airway cough syndrome
Translations: