coddling

Verb

coddle (third-person singular simple present coddles, present participle coddling, simple past and past participle coddled)

1. (transitive) To treat gently or with great care.
   • How many of our English princes have been coddled at home by their fond papas and mammas, walled up in inaccessible castles, with a tutor and a library, guarded by cordons of sentinels, sermoners, old aunts, old women from the world without, and have nevertheless escaped from all these guardians...1854, Arthur Pendennis [pseudonym; William Makepeace Thackeray], The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family, volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], →OCLC

   Synonyms:

   cosset

2. (transitive) To cook slowly in hot water that is below the boiling point.
   • a coddled egg

   Synonyms:

   simmer

3. (transitive) To exercise excessive or damaging authority in an attempt to protect. To overprotect.

See all 5 meanings of coddle

Noun (1)

codling (plural codlings)

1. A young small cod.
   • Here a couple of old men in whiskers and spectacles leant over us, making strange sounds. Some codling had got caught in the net the same time as we were. These the old men threw back into the sea; but us they seemed to think very precious. …1922, Hugh Lofting, The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle, part 4, chapter 2, The Fidgit's Story
2. A hake (cod-related food fish), especially one from the genus Urophycis.

Noun (2)

codling (plural codlings)

1. A small, immature apple
   • Malvolio: Not yet old enough for a man, nor yong enough
     for a boy: as a squash is before tis a pescod, or a Codling
     when tis almost an Apple: Tis with him in standing water,
     betweene boy and man. He is verie well-fauour'd,
     and he speakes verie shrewishly: One would thinke his
     mothers milke were...c. 1601–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Twelfe Night, or What You Will”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
2. Any of various greenish, elongated English apple varieties, used for cooking

See all 5 meanings of codling