Word.ws English Dictionary

cosenage

cosenage is the obsolete spelling of cozenage.

Meaning of cozenage

Noun

cozenage (countable and uncountable, plural cozenages)

  1. (uncountable) The fact or practice of cozening; cheating, deception.
    • They ſay this tovvne is full of coſenage: / As nimble Iuglers that deceiue the eie: […]c. 1594 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Comedie of Errors”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
  2. (countable) An instance of cozening; a scam.
    • When I receive your Lines, my dear Princess, and find there Expressions of a Passion; though Reason and my own Immerit tell me, it must not be for me; yet is the Cozenage so pleasing to me, that I (brib'd by my own Desires) believe them still before the other.1646, John Suckling, Fragmenta Aurea, Letter I, reprinted in The Works of Sir John Suckling: Containing His Poems, Letters, and Plays (Dublin: O. Nelson, 1766), p. 109

Forms of cosenage

pluralcosenages

Questions about cosenage

What is cosenage the obsolete spelling of?
Cosenage is the obsolete spelling of cozenage.

Words near cosenage in the dictionary

  1. coselections
  2. Coseley
  3. coself
  4. cosemisimple
  5. cosen
  6. cosenage
  7. cosenages
  8. cosening
  9. cosenings
  10. cosensitization
  11. cosensitizations

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cosenage (page history and authors); cozenage (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.

Last updated:

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