Meaning & use
cosh
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Meanings
nouncountableBritish
A short, heavy stick or tube used as a weapon to hit someone.
Grammar: Chiefly British; the American word is often blackjack.
Patterns
- hit someone with a cosh
The guard was attacked with a cosh in the dark corridor.
Police found a cosh hidden in the van.
In old crime films, the villain carries a cosh.
verbtransitiveBritishinformal
To hit someone, especially on the head, with a heavy blunt object.
Grammar: Takes a person as object: they coshed the watchman.
Patterns
- cosh someone
- cosh someone on the head
The thief coshed the night watchman and ran off.
He was coshed from behind as he opened the door.
In the story, the detective gets coshed and wakes up in a cellar.
Word forms
| plural | coshes |
|---|---|
| third person singular | coshes |
| past tense | coshed |
| past participle | coshed |
| -ing form | coshing |
Common combinations
- hit with a cosh
- The victim was hit with a cosh and robbed.
- carry a cosh
- He was arrested for carrying a cosh in the street.
- cosh on the head
- A cosh on the head left him dazed.
- under the cosh
- The government is under the cosh from rising prices.
Synonyms and how they differ
- truncheon
- A truncheon is the short stick carried by police, so it suggests legal use, whereas a cosh suggests a criminal weapon.
- blackjack
- Blackjack is the usual American term for a small weighted club, and is not used in British speech.
- club
- Club covers any heavy stick and is bigger and less specific than cosh.
- bludgeon
- As a verb, bludgeon means to beat repeatedly and violently, while cosh is usually one hard blow.
Word family
- coshing noun
- an attack with a cosh
- cosh boy noun
- a 1950s British name for a young street criminal
Commonly confused: cosh or cash?
cosh vs cash
Cash is money in coins or notes and sounds similar in many accents, but it has nothing to do with the weapon.
Practice
The security guard was knocked unconscious when a robber ___ him from behind.
Choose one answer.
Coshed means hit with a heavy object. Coached, cashed and coaxed sound similar but have different meanings and do not describe an attack.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “cosh”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.