Word.ws English Dictionary

cony-catching

cony-catching noun: deception, trickery.

Noun

cony-catching (uncountable)

  1. (obsolete, slang, Elizabethan) Deception, trickery.
    • Come, you are so full of conicatching.c. 1590–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Taming of the Shrew”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
    • I doe beware and keepe my selfe from such treasons, and cunny-catching in mine owne bosome, not by an unquiet, and tumultuary curiosity, but rather by a diversion and resolution.1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter VIII, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC

Forms of cony-catching

alternative formconey-catching
alternative formconicatching
alternative formconny-catching
alternative formcunny-catching

Questions about cony-catching

What does cony-catching mean?
Cony-catching means deception, trickery.
What part of speech is cony-catching?
Cony-catching is a noun.

Words near cony-catching in the dictionary

  1. cony wool
  2. cony-catch
  3. cony-catcher
  4. cony-catchers
  5. cony-catches
  6. cony-catching
  7. cony-gry
  8. Conybeare
  9. Conybeares
  10. conycatcher
  11. conycatchers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cony-catching (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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