2. To overtop; surpass, excel: esp. in phrases that cowes the gowan, that cowes a'.
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1842 Hist. Berwickshire Naturalists' Club2 18 The..proverb..‘That cowes, or keels, the gowan’.
1854 H. MillerMy Schools & Schoolmasters (1858) 556 (note) There was surely some God's soul at work for us, or she [a vessel] would never have cowed yon [wave].