Word.ws English Dictionary

cousenage

cousenage 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 cousenage

pluralcousenages

Questions about cousenage

What is cousenage the obsolete spelling of?
Cousenage is the obsolete spelling of cozenage.

Words near cousenage in the dictionary

  1. couscousou
  2. couscoussier
  3. couscoussiers
  4. Couse
  5. cousen
  6. cousenage
  7. cousens
  8. Couser
  9. Couserans
  10. Cousers
  11. couses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cousenage (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.

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