Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Like
abocock , etc., an erroneous book-form ofbycocket (which see).
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun obsolete Common misspelling of
bycoket .
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
From a series of mistranscriptions and misprints, from "a bycoket" to "a bicoket" to "abocoket" to "abocoke" to, at last, "abacot".
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Examples
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In spite of this exposure of the impostor, the word was allowed to stand, with a woodcut of an abacot, in an important dictionary published subsequently, although Dr. Murray's remarks were quoted.
Literary Blunders; A chapter in the "History of Human Error" 1893
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In spite of this exposure of the impostor, the word was allowed to stand, with a woodcut of an abacot, in an important dictionary published subsequently, although Dr. Murray's remarks were quoted.
Literary Blunders Henry Benjamin Wheatley 1877
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` ` abacot, '' ` ` knise, '' ` ` morse, '' and ` ` polien. ''
Literary Blunders Henry Benjamin Wheatley 1877
reesetee commented on the word abacot
This word, apparently, was originally bycoket. More here.
March 17, 2009
Gammerstang commented on the word abacot
(noun) - A spurious word which by a remarkable series of blunders has gained a foothold in the dictionaries. It is usually defined as "a cap of state, wrought up into the shape of two crowns, worn formerly by English kings." Neither word nor thing has any real existence. In Edward Hall's "Chronicles" 1550 the word bicocket (Old French bicoquet, a sort of peaked cap or head-dress) happened to be printed abococket. Other writers copied the error. Then in 1577 Holinshed improved the new word to abococke, and Abraham Fleming to abacot, and so it spun merrily along, a sort of rolling stone of philology . . . until Spelman landed the prize in his "Glossarium," giving it the definition quoted above. So through the dictionaries of Bailey, Ash, and Todd it has been handed down to our time - a standing example of the . . . ponderous indolence which philologers repeat without examining the errors of their predecessors. Nay, the error has been amusingly accentuated by . . . a rough wood-cut of the mythical abacot, which in its turn has been servilely reproduced.
--William Walsh's Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities, 1909
January 16, 2018
Logophile77 commented on the word abacot
This word has a FREAKING AMAZING etymology. Listed.
February 2, 2018