Word.ws English Dictionary

cogniac

/ˈkɒnjæk/

cogniac noun: counterfeit money. Also the alternative spelling of cognac.

Noun

cogniac (uncountable)

  1. (US, dated, slang) Counterfeit money.
    • There are sixteen wholesale dealers […] to whom they sell, at a regular per centage, their imported Cogniac; […]1823, William A. Coffey, Inside Out, Or, An Interior View of the New-York State Prison: Together with Biographical Sketches of the Lives of Several of the Convicts, page 108
    • Next morning the conspirators met at the yellow cottage, where having settled the business of the day, by giving out the cogniac, and receiving her portion of the good money, the honorable corps adjourned to attend to matters of more importance [...].1838, Ann Baker Carson, The Memoirs of the Celebrated and Beautiful Mrs. Ann Carson, page 138

Also used as

cogniac is also the alternative spelling of cognac.

Forms of cogniac

pluralcogniacs

Origin of cogniac

From Cogniac Street, a location in Dunham, Quebec, close to the United States-Canada border from which a significant amount of counterfeiting took place in the 18th century and early 19th century.

A respelling of French cognac.

Questions about cogniac

What does cogniac mean?
Cogniac means counterfeit money.
What part of speech is cogniac?
Cogniac is a noun.
How do you pronounce cogniac?
Cogniac is pronounced /ˈkɒnjæk/.
What is the plural of cogniac?
The plural of cogniac is cogniacs.

Words near cogniac in the dictionary

  1. cognations
  2. cognatus
  3. cognescenti
  4. cognetics
  5. Cognevich
  6. cogniac
  7. cogniacs
  8. cognification
  9. cognisable
  10. cognisable offence
  11. cognisable offences

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cogniac (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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