Word.ws English Dictionary

cosseting

cosseting is the present participle and gerund of cosset.

Meaning of cosset

Verb

cosset (third-person singular simple present cossets, present participle cosseting or cossetting, simple past and past participle cosseted or cossetted)

  1. (transitive) To treat like a pet; to overly indulge.
    • The car cossets its occupants in comfort.
    Synonyms:
    coddle
  2. (transitive) To fondle; to touch or stroke lovingly.
    • The foam cossets your skin.
    Synonyms:
    caress
  3. (figuratively, transitive) To benefit; to make life easy for.
    • An independent oversight body is just setting up, but at full strength it will have a core team of just five. This is a state of affairs that cossets and enriches bailiffs at the expense of families who’ve fallen into debt.2023 August 17, Aditya Chakrabortty, “Can’t pay and they really do take it away: what happens when the bailiffs come knocking”, in The Guardian

See all 5 meanings of cosset

Noun

cosseting (plural cossetings)

  1. The act by which somebody is cosseted or pampered.
    • It was decided that she should go for a week or two to Rose Lodge to regain her strength, and submit to the welcome cossetings of her mother and grandmother.1966, Miss Read, The Market Square
    • As Guy de Jonquières has noted, Singapore’s success owes more to the fact that it is a “meticulously planned economy” with “handholding and cosseting” of overseas investors by “powerful, eager to please bureaucrats”.2019 December 17, Howard Davies, “Will the UK really turn into 'Singapore-on-Thames' after Brexit?”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

Forms of cosseting

pluralcossetings

Questions about cosseting

What does cosseting mean?
Cosseting means the act by which somebody is cosseted or pampered.
What is cosseting the present participle and gerund of?
Cosseting is the present participle and gerund of cosset.
What part of speech is cosseting?
Cosseting is a noun.
What is the plural of cosseting?
The plural of cosseting is cossetings.

Words near cosseting in the dictionary

  1. cosses
  2. cosset
  3. cosseted
  4. cosseter
  5. cosseters
  6. cosseting
  7. cossetings
  8. cossets
  9. cossette
  10. cossetted
  11. cossettes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cosseting (page history and authors); cosset (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: “cosseting.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cosseting. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.