cosh1
/kɒʃ
/British informal
noun
A thick, heavy stick or bar used as a weapon: the defendants deny having a self-loading pistol and a telescopic cosh...
- It houses thousands of weapons, including guns and ammunition, knives, knuckledusters, coshes, crossbows and swords.
- Some were armed with bottles and others brandished weapons including coshes or iron bars, a screwdriver and a knife.
- When the lockers were later searched coshes, knives, bayonets, and swords were found.
verb [with object]
Hit (someone) on the head with a cosh: the other coshed him and he fell unconscious...
- Fourteen years after this was made, the idea of robberies from trains, and indeed coshing drivers - coolly omitted from the professor's sophistical account of what harm his thieves have really done - lost a smidgen of its innocence.
- The columnist coshed me on the back of the head and, while I was out, dumped me in the uncharted territory of his foreign policy mistakes.
- Each member brought a particular skill to the gang, which successfully robbed the night mail train to London, causing serious head injuries when they coshed the train driver, who never fully recovered.
Phrases
under the cosh
Origin
Mid 19th century: of unknown origin.
Rhymes
cosh2
/kɒʃ/ /kɒˈseɪtʃ /abbreviation Mathematics
Hyperbolic cosine.
Origin
From cos2 + -h for hyperbolic. Compare with coth.