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Cozen   Listen
verb
Cozen  v. t.  (past & past part. cozened; pres. part. cozening)  To cheat; to defraud; to beguile; to deceive, usually by small arts, or in a pitiful way. "He had cozened the world by fine phrases." "Children may be cozened into a knowledge of the letters." "Goring loved no man so well but that he would cozen him, and expose him to public mirth for having been cozened."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cozen" Quotes from Famous Books



... little many, who profess to believe the Scriptures, do apparently look upon them as the Rule of their Actions, we have in regard of the Precept not to Covet; which is as much forbidden by the Law of God as not to Steal, or Cozen a Man of what is his property: And yet the same Parents who have bred their Children in such a Sense of the Enormity of these last Vices, as that they oftentimes seem to them like things that they are Naturally uncapable of, are so far from ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham

... want a good pudding, mind what you are taught: Take eggs, six in number, when bought for a groat; The fruit with which Eve her husband did cozen, Well pared and well chopped, take at least half a dozen; Six ounces of bread—let the cook eat the crust— And crumble the soft as fine as the dust; Six ounces of currants from the stalks you must sort, Lest they husk out your teeth, and spoil all the sport; Six ounces of sugar ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss

... a woman better!—I forgive thee all. For the sake of thy grace and beauty I forgive thee that which had not been forgiven to virtue, or to patriotism, or to the dignity of age! See now how good a thing is woman's wit and loveliness, that can make kings forget their duty and cozen even blindfolded Justice to peep ere she lifts her sword! Take back thy crown, O Egypt! It is now my care that, though it be heavy, ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard

... Good sir, have I ever cozen'd any friends of yours of their land? bought their possessions? taken forfeit of their mortgage? begg'd a reversion from them? bastarded their issue? What have I done, that may ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson

... no; I love not that way; you are cozen'd; I love with as much ambition as a conqueror, And ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... made a bold stroke with excellent effect. "I suppose," says he, "you think you are going shares with Harris, I suppose you think you will see to that yourselves; you would naturally not think so flat a rogue could cozen you. But have a care! These half-idiots have a sort of cunning, as the skunk has its stench; and it may be news to you that Harris has taken care of himself already. Yes, for him the treasure is all money in the bargain. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson

... make even religion your stalking-horse to get the world, you fear not God. And what will you do whose hearts go after your covetousness? you who are led by covetousness up and down, as it were by the nose; sometimes to swear, to lie, to cozen, and cheat and defraud, when you can get the advantage to do it. You are far, very far, from the fear of God. "Ye adulterers and adulteresses," for so the covetous are called, "know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... thus bring shame on me to-day, speedily will I avenge me of mine injury; with mine own hands will I quickly tear out thy heart and thy tongue, and throw them with the residue of thy carcase to be meat for the dogs, that others may be lessoned by thee not to cozen the sons of kings." ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus

... unsuspecting confidence. To you friendship is a tool and honour a convenience. You cheat in every breath you draw. And what a man gives you in his innocence may bring him to the gallows. By God! I'd rather slit throats on a highway for a purse or two than cozen men to their death by such ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... you eyes? Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed, And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes ... ... ... ... What devil was't That thus cozen'd you at hoodman-blind? Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight, Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all, Or but a sickly part of one true sense Could not so mope. O, shame! ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... the Earl, "that her Majesty hath so hard a conceit of me, that I should go about to cozen her, as though I had got a fee simple from her, and had it not before, or that I had not had her full release for payment of the money I borrowed. I pray God, any that did put such scruple in her, have not deceived her more than ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... there was an act of Assembly, made at Newport in the year 1701-2, for the better preventing of fraud, and cozen, in paying the duties for importing of negro and Indian slaves into this colony, and the same being found in some clauses deficient, for the effecting of the full intent and ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... O'Keefe:—Tell Miss Linden that I have a clew. I am almost surtin her cozen has got away with Dodger. He won't hurt him, but he will get him out of the city. Wen I hear more I ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger

... spurn'd with contumely, Were feeble foretastes of my present torments. They love each other! By what secret charm Have they deceived me? Where, and when, and how Met they? You knew it all. Why was I cozen'd? You never told me of those stolen hours Of amorous converse. Have they oft been seen Talking together? Did they seek the shades Of thickest woods? Alas! full freedom had they To see each other. Heav'n approved their sighs; They loved without ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine

... the youth abode on wake, because his cup was not drugged. Then came Halimah and said to her lover, "How deemest thou of yonder cornuted, who is drunken in his heedlessness and weeteth not the wiles of women? There is no help for it but that I cozen him into divorcing me. To-morrow, I will disguise myself as a slave-girl and walk after thee to his shop, where do thou say to him, 'O master, I went to-day into the Khan of Al-Yasirjiyah, where I saw this damsel and bought her for a thousand diners. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... the very shadow of piety it carries. You hate the thing itself so perfectly, that you cannot endure the very picture of it. Do not deceive yourselves, the true quarrel is because they run not to the same excess of riot with you. If they will lie, cozen, defraud, swear, and blaspheme as other men, you could endure to make them companions, as you do others, and the principle of that is, the enmity that was placed in the beginning, that mortal irreconcilable ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... the gospel. This letter is dated from Dublin, in April, 1538; and among other matters, the archbishop says, "A bird may be taught to speak with as much sense as many of the clergy do in this country. These, though not scholars, yet are crafty to cozen the poor common people and to dissuade them from following his highness' orders. The country folk here much hate your lordship, and despitefully call you, in their Irish tongue, the Blacksmith's Son. As a friend, I desire your lordship to look ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... Darsie, MORE TUO, and seem to say it is little worth while to cozen one's self with such vulgar dreams; yours being, on the contrary, of a high and heroic character, bearing the same resemblance to mine, that a bench, covered with purple cloth and plentifully loaded with ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... doubt his motives. As long as she thought she had given her gift to one who offered a responsive passion, she was glad and proud of what she had done, but she had heard of man's pretense in order to cozen woman out of her favors, and she began to think she had been deceived. To her the logic seemed irresistible; that if the same motive lived in his heart, and prompted him, that burned in her breast, and induced her, who was virgin to her very heart-core, ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major

... beside their way; Whate'er men speak by this New Light, Still they are sure to be i' th' right. 'Tis a dark-lanthorn of the Spirit, 505 Which none see by but those that bear it: A light that falls down from on high, For spiritual trades to cozen by An Ignis Fatuus, that bewitches And leads men into pools and ditches, 510 To make them dip themselves, and sound For Christendom in dirty pond To dive like wild-fowl for salvation, And fish to catch regeneration. ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... thief." He replied, "No I am not a thief, but a singing-man, a stranger who, hearing your voices, came to sing to you." When the folk heard his words, they talked of letting him go; but the Persian said, "O folk, let not his speech cozen you. This one is none other than a thief who knoweth how to sing, and when he cometh upon the like of us, he is a singer." Said they, "O our lord, this man is a stranger, and needs we must release him." Quoth he, "By Allah, my heart heaveth at this fellow! Let me ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... at that, but a cutthroat who holds his sword to the breast of an unarmed merchant while he filches from him his gold. Added to that, a drunkard as his father is; and, above all, a hypocrite, as his father is not, yet clever enough, with all his vices, to cozen three men whose vile rule has ruined Frankfort, and left the broad Rhine empty of its life-giving commerce;" she waved her hand toward the ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... you not bred up in desarts, But in the softness of some Asian court, Where luxury and ease invent kind words, To cozen tender ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... special virtue, such as a right shirt-sleeve or a left stocking, though wherefore is not very clear; and in China, about Canton, a fisherman's net is employed with as little apparent reason. In Sweden the babe is wrapped in red cloth, which we may be allowed to conjecture is intended to cozen the fairies ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... that he is, he dares not look me in the face. I will take no counsel with him, and will undertake nothing in common with him. He has wronged me and deceived me enough, he shall not cozen me further; let him go his own way, for Jove has robbed him of his reason. I loathe his presents, and for himself care not one straw. He may offer me ten or even twenty times what he has now done, nay—not though it be all that he has in the world, both now or ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... went to the Temple to my Cozen Roger Pepys, to see and talk with him a little: who tells me that, with much ado, the Parliament do agree to throw down Popery; but he says it is with so much spite and passion, and an endeavor of bringing all Nonconformists ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... What! You would have me Cozen, intrigue, and cheat, and play the huckster, As your republicans, peace on their lips And subtle scheming treaties, till the moment When it is safe to spring? Would you have me cringe To the ignorant mob of churls, through whose sweet voices The road to ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris

... young wing yet. Bold—overbold on the perch, but, think you, Ferdinand, He can endure the tall skies yonder? Cozen Advantage out of the teeth of the hurricane? Choose his own mate against the lammer-geier? Ride out a night-long tempest, hold his pitch Between the lightning and the cloud it leaps from, Never too ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling

... one as Parents Bestow on cursed sons, now now, I laugh To see how those poor younglings are both cheated Of life and comfort: look ye, look ye, Lords, I go but some ten minutes (more or less) Before my time, but they have finely cozen'd Themselves of many, many hopefull years Amidst their prime ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... that he refused to think—thought! He had risked so much in this enterprise, gone through so much; and to lose it all! He cursed the girl's fickleness, her coyness, her obstinacy! He hated her. And do what he might for her now, he doubted if he could cozen her or get much from her. Yet in that lay his only chance, apart from Mr. Pomeroy. His eye was cunning and his ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman

... whimpered Katherine, leaning back, "how can I go on? Don't you see what a sneak I am? It was bad enough to cozen with my heedless, random markings of the book, but to think that line of red ink might have been marked in his blood, for I nearly sent the poor ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr

... his power is a curse: he commands women and wine! but the women seem fictitious and devilish, and the wine does not make him drunk. He now begins to hate the Devil, and tries to cheat him. He studies again, and explores the darkest depths of sorcery for a receipt to cozen hell; but all in vain. Sometimes the Devil's finger turns over the page for him, and points out an experiment, and Michael hears a whisper—"Try that, Michael!" The horror increases; and Michael ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... parents, striking their bargains with the nice court and city ladies, who, like queens in a tragedy, display all their finery on benches before their doors (where they hourly censure, and are censured), and to observe how the handsomest of each degree equally admire, envy and cozen one another, is to me one of the chiefest amusements of the place. The ladies who are too lazy, or too stately, but especially those who sit up late at cards have their provisions brought to their bedsides, where they conclude the bargain with the higler; ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... shook; for why, he stamp'd and swore, As if the vicar meant to cozen him. But after many ceremonies done, He calls for wine; a health, quoth he; as if He'd been aboard carousing with his mates After a storm; quaft off the muscadel, And threw the sops all in the sexton's face; Having no other cause but that his beard Grew thin and hungerly, and ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... pretensions, and take it for granted that he must be as superior to other men in genius as he is in birth. Or, to give a more familiar solution of the enigma, the Poet and the Peer agree to honour each other's acceptances on the bank of Fame, and sometimes cozen the town to some tune between them. Really, however, and with all his privileges, Lord Byron might as well not have written that strange letter about Pope. I could not afford it, poor as I am. Why does he pronounce, ex cathedra and robed, that Cowper ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... exceeding fear and foregoing him to the second door, whereby he would have had me enter, bolted it and cried out at him, saying, 'By Allah, an thou open not to me, I will slay thee;[FN84] for I am none of those whom thou canst readily cozen!' 'What deemest thou of cozening?' 'Verily, I am startled by the loneliness of the house and the lack of any keeper at its door; for I see none appear.' 'O my lord, this is a private door.' 'Private or public, open to me.' ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... himself ... I desire that hee may give his account for the tobacco." As showing how closely Sir Walter's name was associated with it long after his death, Dr. Brushfield quotes the following entry from the diary of the great Earl of Cork: "Sept. 1, 1641. Sent by Travers to my infirme cozen Roger Vaghan, a pott of ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson

... bones you are false, all of you! You do not cog your dice, perhaps, but you bubble your friends with finesses, and are as much sharpers at heart as the lowest tat-mongers in Alsatia. You empty our purses, and cozen our women with twanging guitars and jingling rhymes, and laugh at us because we are honest and trust ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... masters when they like, And cozen with their kindness; they have spells Superior to the wand of the magicians; And from their lips the words of wisdom fall, Like softest music ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston

... passional To bachelors and dames. The hedge is gemmed with diamonds, The air with Cupids full, The cobweb clues of Rosamond Guide lovers to the pool. Each dimple in the water, Each leaf that shades the rock Can cozen, pique and flatter, Can parley and provoke. Goodfellow, Puck and goblins, Know more than any book. Down with your doleful problems, And court the sunny brook. The south-winds are quick-witted, The schools are sad and slow, The ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... I was too late informed of that plot, How that he went about to cozen you: And formed a will, and sent it To your good friend here, Master Weathercock, In which was nothing ...
— The London Prodigal • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]

... specious. Susan, with hair escaping in roguish curls beneath her little cap; her taper waist encompassed by a page's tunic; the trim contour of her figure frankly revealed by her vestment, was truly a lad "dressed up to cozen" any lover who preferred his friend and his bottle to his mistress. Merry as a sand-boy she danced about in russet boots that came to the knee; lithe and lissome in the full swing of immunity ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... . . Every one cryes out for hunger. Children, you must die. ffrench, you called yourselves Gods of the earth, that you should be feered; notwithstanding you shall tast of the bitternesse. . . . In the morning the husband looks upon his wife, the Brother his sister, the cozen the cozen, the Oncle the nevew, that weare for the most part found dead." So for two or three pages he goes on telling of the cruel suffering and of the various substitutes for nourishing food, such as bark ground and boiled; bones that had lain about ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson

... said too. For who shall go about To cozen fortune, and be honourable Without the stamp of merit! O, that estates, degrees, and offices, Were not deriv'd corruptly! and that clear honour Were purchas'd by the merit of the wearer! How many then should cover that stand bare? How many be commanded that command? And how much ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare

... by their uncle cozen'd Of comfort, kingdom, kindred, freedom, life. Whose hand soever lanc'd their tender hearts, Thy head, all indirectly, gave direction: No doubt the murderous knife was dull and blunt Till it was whetted on thy stone-hard heart, To revel in the entrails of my lambs. But that still use of grief makes ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... ye deem ye can walk into London town, and that the first man you meet can point you to your uncle—Randall call ye him?—as readily as I could show you my brother, Thomas Shoveller of Cranbury. But you are just as like to meet with some knave who might cozen you of all you have, or mayhap a beadle might take you up for vagabonds, and thrust you in the stocks, or ever you get to London town; so I would fain give you some commendation, an I knew to whom to make it, and ye be not too proud ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... flatteries cozen young maids' beauty. There pride oft gets the vantage hand of duty, There sweet ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... your entertainments: there is a friend of mine come to town, tells me there is three 70 cozen-germans that has cozened all the hosts of Readins, of Maidenhead, of Colebrook, of horses and money. I tell you for good will, look you: you are wise, and full of gibes and vlouting-stocks, and 'tis not convenient you should be cozened. Fare ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... heard one night from one of his story-tellers[FN87] that among women are those who are doughtier than men of valour and greater of excellence and that among them are those who will do battle with the sword and others who cozen the quickest-witted of magistrates and baffle them and bring down on them all manner of calamity; whereupon quoth the Sultan, 'I would fain hear this of their craft from one of those who have had ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... wholly eclipsed by the tremendous effect produced by the grey- haired Sophie Schroder in a recitation of Burger's Lenore. While the daughter had been taunted in the newspapers with unfairly employing all sorts of musical attractions to cozen a benefit concert out of the music lovers of Leipzig for a mother who never had anything to do with that art, we, who were there as her musical aiders and abettors, had to stand like so many idle conjurers, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... I, it is a very strange thing, if true. But it is not so; and we cozen ourselves by presently concluding a thing to be hot if it have a faculty of causing heat, when as yet we see that the same garment causes heat in winter, and cold in summer. Thus ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... baffled the jury as to make them doubtful of the clearest thing in the world. Do not foolishly imagine that you have any compliment to pay yourself on this score; the most shining abilities, when used to deceive and mislead, to trick and cozen mankind, and to persuade them out of their lawful property, become the most dangerous possessions, and are as mischievous as plagues, pestilence, and famine. How can you dare to arrogate to yourself that part of philosophy which teaches you to look upon the luxuries of life with indifference, ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas

... Beauty but the Veil Thy Heavenly hides behind, and from itself Feeds, and our Hearts yearn after as a Bride That glances past us Veil'd—but ever so As none the Beauty from the Veil may know. How long wilt thou continue thus the World To cozen with the Fantom of a Veil From which Thou only peepest?—Time it is To unfold thy perfect Beauty. I would be Thy Lover, and Thine only—I, mine Eyes Seal'd in the Light of Thee to all but Thee, Yea, in the Revelation ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... of armorials than the French. So I found work every day. And whiles I wrought, my master would leave me, and doff his raiment and don his rags, and other infirmities, and cozen the world, which he did clepe it 'plucking of the goose:' this done, would meet me and demand half my earnings; and with restless piercing eye ask me would I be so base as cheat my poor master by making three parts in lieu of two, till I threatened to lend him a cuff to boot in ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade



Words linked to "Cozen" :   fool, deceive, victimize, fob, set up, cuckold, delude, acquire, play a joke on, wander, rip off, cheat on, gull, hoax, flim-flam, sell, victimise, befool, play a trick on, trick, play tricks, humbug, pull someone's leg, gain, frame, fox



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