I shared Zaria Gorvett’s BBC story with my wife, telling her it was “everything you ever wanted to know about codpieces,” and she had a question for me: was the cod of codpiece related to the name of the fish? I said I wasn’t sure and headed to the OED, where I found that the answer was “Maybe.” The OED entry (revised 2020) for the fish name said “Origin uncertain. Perhaps shortened from codling n.¹, and hence perhaps ultimately related to cod n.¹ [A bag or pouch; A purse or wallet; A pod of a pea, bean, or other leguminous plant; The scrotum] (see discussion at codling n.¹).” Under codling ‘cod(fish)’ (also revised 2020) we find:
Origin uncertain. Perhaps < cod n.¹ + ‑ling suffix¹.
Compare cod n.² and codfish n., which may both derive ultimately from this word.
Notes
The original sense was perhaps ‘fish found in the cod end of a trawl net’: compare cod n.¹ 5a and cod net n. As a demersal fish, cod was made more accessible by the development of the trawling technology, and would have been found often in the cod ends of trawl nets. (Perhaps compare similarly dogdrave n. [A marine fish used for food … Sometimes identified with the cod])Earlier currency is implied by the following example, showing a Latin borrowing of the English word:
1289 In .v..xx. x. codling’ empt’ Glouc’ xvij.s.
in J. Webb, Household Expenses R. de Swinfield (1853) 31Perhaps attested earlier as a surname: Robert Codling (1275, Lincolnshire).
And for cod n.¹ ‘bag; purse; pod; scrotum’ we have:
Cognate with early modern Dutch kodde testicle (1599 in Kiliaan, in isolated attestation), and further with the Scandinavian forms cited at cod n.³ [A bearing or supporting piece on which an axle or other moving part rests; A cushion; a pillow] (which is borrowed from these), and probably also with Middle Dutch codde (Dutch kodde) in the sense ‘club’ (compare codd n.¹); probably < an ablaut variant (zero-grade) of the Germanic base of Old English cēod bag, pouch, Old High German kiot pouch (see note); further etymology uncertain and disputed.
Compare post-classical Latin coddus in the sense ‘bag, measure of grain’ (from 1158 in British sources; < English).
Perhaps compare kid n.³ [A seed-pod of a leguminous plant], kid v.³ [Of plants: To form pods]
Notes
Although Old English cēod is rare and its attestations disputed, evidence for the same base in continental West Germanic languages is more plentiful; in addition to Old High German kiot, compare the derivative formations Middle Dutch cūdele cod end, cod net (Dutch kuil), Middle Low German küdel bag, container (also used in fishing), Middle High German kiutel dewlap (German Keutel in the specific senses ‘fish net, bowel, swelling’, now regional); compare ‑le suffix. With the use of these derivatives with reference to fishing nets compare sense 5 and cod end n., cod net n.
That’s quite a tangled net, and I don’t know what to make of it, but I herewith cast it upon the waters.
Middle High German kiutel dewlap (German Keutel in the specific senses ‘fish net, bowel, swelling’, now regional)
In and around Cologne, Köttel can be used for a certain phenomenon on the south end of a north-bound animal (sheep, long-haired dog etc) – dingleberries, in short. The word more frequently (as at the wiktionary link) is heard denominating small hard clumps of painfully produced shit, such as when Sparky-the-dog has eaten more bones than he should. Or rabbit pellets (the outgoing, not ingoing kind).
But I suppose Köttel is merely a diminutive form of Kot, not related to Keutel.
In German, vowels come and go, talking of Michelangelo. There’s no relying on them.
Köttel previously at LH.
Whatever the etymology of “codpiece” in English, it’s vaguely interesting that it doesn’t appear to be cognate to or a calque from (or a calque to …) the corresponding word in a range of other European languages, at least if one takes wikipedia at extremely face value and doesn’t dig deeper into potential synonyms. Here’s a list for starters.
Danish (& bokmal): skamkapsel
Dutch: braguette
French: braguette
German: Schamkapsel
Polish: mieszek
Portuguese: braguilha
Russian: гульфик
Slovenian: bavtara
Spanish: bragueta de armar
Swedish: blygdkapsel
Yes, I too was struck by the variety of words. (These days гульфик is ‘fly.’)
Ditto fr braguette : fr.wikipedia Braguette is mostly about codpieces but the en.wikipedia translink is to Fly (clothing) (a wikidata gotcha, and not the first).
You have reminded me of ‘cods’ as a playground slang word for testicles, in use in England mid-1960s.
This would make “codding” a near relative of “talking bollocks”, the two are sometimes found together in individuals eager to impress.
The existence of cod “pod, husk, pouch” and cod “the Atlantic fish Gadus morhua” beside pod “peasecod”, dialectal “pouch”, and the pod- in Scots podlok “young of the coalfish at the second stage of its development; ?also, the true pollack” has always struck me as… odd.
There’s also the third iteration of “cod” in the sense of “fake, ersatz” found in AmEng mostly in compounds like “cod-Latin” but reputedly more prone to freestanding use in BrEng. One source says it’s found in Polari but doesn’t quite say it’s *from* Polari. But its etymology seems mysterious and it may be a mere homophone rather than a non-obvious extended sense of one of the others …
> These days гульфик is ‘fly.’
And possibly originally so, since it’s a borrowing of Dutch gulp, which as far as I can see (mainly from etymologiebank.nl) has always meant something more like a fly than a codpiece. That also got into Scandinavian as gylp, gylf, osv.
There’s also the third iteration of “cod” in the sense of “fake, ersatz” found in AmEng mostly in compounds like “cod-Latin” but reputedly more prone to freestanding use in BrEng.
That’s not AmEng at all — the people who use “cod-Latin” are the same kind of people who quote Monty Python and Flanders and Swann; to wit, Anglophiles.
Peter L: If I wear a codpiece in Scandinavia, am I committing Gylfaginning?
That’s not AmEng at all — the people who use “cod-Latin” are the same kind of people who quote Monty Python and Flanders and Swann; to wit, Anglophiles.
As an American I agree. In fact, I have plenty of Anglophile American friends who will happily throw around terms like “gobsmacked” or “council flat” or “pining for the fjords” but I am still unfamiliar with “cod-Latin”. Probably an Elizabethan Club term.
These days гульфик is ‘fly.’
Not quite: the everyday word for fly is ширинка. Not sure where the WP contributor(s) got this idea. Гульфик, unless it’s meant to denote an actual ancient codpiece, is mostly used ironically. I, for one, only came to know this word thanks to the Rabelais translations I was reading as a kid.
Thanks, I’ve updated my dictionary accordingly.