Citations:cock

the leading thing

 * 1542, Nicholas Udall (translator), Erasmus (original author), Apophthegmata, page 164:
 * The contrarye [side of a die] to this... was called Venus, or Cous, and yt was cocke, the beste that might be cast.
 * 1672 (original), 1776 (printed), Andrew Marvell, The Works of Andrew Marvell, page 154:
 * Tis sir Salomon's sword; cock of as many men as it hath been drawn against. Woe worth the man that comes in the way of so dead-doing a tool,

minister

 * 1614, Thomas Adams, The Diuells Banket. Described in Sixe Sermons, Etc, page 120:
 * No noyse to waken the Sybarites, unlesse the Cockes, the Ministers [...] Few will beleeue Christs Cocke, {{...|though hee crowes to them that the day is broken.

cockle, shell-fish

 * 1661, Robert Lovell, Sive Panzoologicomineralogia. Or a Compleat History of Animals and Minerals, page 189:
 * Cocks, and Cokles. Scrib. Larg. T. Strengthen the stomach. Plin. They increase flesh. Muff. and lust. Being of so hot a nature, that they fly above the water like an arrow, in the summer nights.

turn

 * 1824, Walter Scott, St. Ronan's Well, page 32:
 * ... with a knowing cock of his eye to his next neighbour. Of this person little need be said.
 * 1843, James Anthony Froude, John Tulloch, Fraser's Magazine, page 694:
 * ... in 1803; my eyes transmogrified [...]; my nose had lost its pretty cock, and had grown elegantly hooked; and

verb: fight, to wage war (of unclear origin, compare [Old] Irish cocad, cog)

 * 1613, An Exposition Upon the Prophet Ionah. Contained in Certaine Sermons Preached in S. Maries Church in Oxford. By George Abbot. With the Text. Few MS. Notes, page 590:
 * he who should haue bene a light to other[s], is in darknesse [...] : he who should haue bene mild to men, is now cocking with God : [...]
 * 1820, John Strype, The life ... of Sir Thomas Smith, page 228 (quoting an a. 1577 text):
 * ... war is made as much by money as by sword; and he that may longest pay his soldiers, goeth victor away : and if they be both disposed to cock it throughly, yet when they both be made bankrupts, then they must needs conclude a peace.