COCKSURE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Cocksure

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adjective

Cocksure adj.

Perfectly safe. (Obs.) "We steal as in a castle, cocksure:... we walk invisible."

Quite certain. (Colloq.) "I thought myself cocksure of the horse which he readily promised me."

Overconfident; of people; as, the team was so cocksure of winning that they didn't practice in the week before the big game.. (Colloq.)

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Etymology of 'Cocksure'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Cocksure" Quotes from Famous Books

... cocksure and triumphant girl meets more than her match in an old peasant woman, the mother of the man she wants ...

— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various

... more ingenuity had been displayed in the number and nature of the side attractions. There were guessing machines where the cocksure were reduced to humbleness of mind by their failures to state accurately the number of women voting in the world or some section thereof; the number of countries that have recently swung into line in the woman movement; the number of ...

— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens

... tellt you,' retorted Robert, with an equivocation altogether unworthy of his growing honesty. 'I was cocksure that cudna be a fiddle. There's the fiddle i' the hert o' 't! Losh! I min' noo. It maun be my grandfather's fiddle 'at I ...

— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... anxiety. She, and all who knew him well, had seen Stonor crush the cocksure and the unwary with an awful effectualness. But Farnborough, with the courage of enthusiasm—enthusiasm for himself and his ...

— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... still in the overburden of debris which the sedulous, tireless Fathers heaped mountain high upon the few recorded teachings of Jesus. But already I see indications of things to come that would make the members of the Council of Trent and the cocksure framers of the Westminster Confession burst from their graves by sheer force of astonishment! There are even now foreshadowings of such revolutionary changes in our concept of God, of the universe, of matter, and the human mind, of evil, and all the controverted points of theological ...

— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... wretched natives in after years escape by the hundreds northward in the hope of living under British government. The fools—the "easy people"—the "folk who gave without a price"—the "truth tellers"—the "men who wish to forget"—the unwise, cocksure, cleaner-living, unbelievably credulous, foolishly honest British officials would be all gone. The pikelhaube and the lash, blackmail and coercion would take the place of generosity. Africa would better be back under the Arabs again, for the ...

— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... too cocksure of that," retorted Captain Miles. "Sharks, I have noticed, frequently resemble cats in the way they will nibble at a bait, and pretend they don't care about it, when all the while they are dying to gobble it down—just ...

— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... laugh at the German Hausfrau, and pity her for a drudge; and it is the way with many Germans to talk as if all Englishwomen were pleasure loving and incompetent. The less people know of a foreign nation the greater nonsense they talk in general, and the more cocksure they are about their own opinions. A year ago, when I was in Germany, I asked a friend I could trust if there really was much Anglophobia abroad except in the newspapers. She reflected a little before she answered, for ...

— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

Words linked to "Cocksure" : positive, cocksureness, overconfident, confident