Word.ws English Dictionary

cobswan

/ˈkɒbswɒn/

cobswan noun: a large male swan.

Noun

cobswan (plural cobswans)

  1. (obsolete, rare) A large male swan.
    • I'am not taken / With a Cob-Swan, or a high-mounting Bull / As fooliſh Leda and Europa were.1611, Ben[jamin] Jonson, Catiline His Conspiracy, London: […] [William Stansby?] for Walter Burre, →OCLC, Act II
    • [T]here's plenty hint / Your pinions have received of late a shock— / Out-soar them, cobswan of the silver flock!1840 March, Robert Browning, “Book the Second”, in Sordello, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 83

Forms of cobswan

pluralcobswans

Origin of cobswan

From cob (“one who is eminent or great”) + swan.

Questions about cobswan

What does cobswan mean?
Cobswan means a large male swan.
What part of speech is cobswan?
Cobswan is a noun.
How do you pronounce cobswan?
Cobswan is pronounced /ˈkɒbswɒn/.
What is the plural of cobswan?
The plural of cobswan is cobswans.

Words near cobswan in the dictionary

  1. cobrotoxin
  2. cobrotoxins
  3. cobs
  4. cobstone
  5. cobstones
  6. cobswan
  7. cobswans
  8. cobuild
  9. cobuilder
  10. cobuilders
  11. cobuilding

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cobswan (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “cobswan.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cobswan. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.