cockle

Noun (1)

Middle English, from Old English coccel

Noun (2)

Middle English cokle, cokkel, cokille "the mollusk Cerastoderma edule, its shell," borrowed from Anglo-French coquile, cokile "eggshell, shell of the cockle or scallop" (continental Old & Middle French coquille), going back to Vulgar Latin *cocīlia or *cocŭlia "shell of a mollusk, nut or egg," alteration of Latin conchȳlia, plural (taken in Vulgar Latin as feminine singular) of conchȳlium "mollusk, shellfish," borrowed from Greek konchýlion "seashell," double diminutive of kónchē "clam, mussel, conch"

Note: The etymon with a long front vowel (*co(n)cīlia) is evident in French coquille, Old Occitan cauquilha and a variety of Gallo-Romance dialect forms (see Französisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, vol. 2, pp. 1002-06), as well as a scattering of Romance forms elsewhere, as Neapolitan skontšiłə "the sea snail Hexaplex trunculus" (see scungilli), Corsican kuntšíłulu "kind of snail," regional Portuguese (Algarve) conquilho "mussel." The form with short u (*cocŭlia) is attested as cagouille "snail, escargot" in western dialects of French (Aunis, Saintonge, Poitou) and cocoille in central dialects (Touraine, Berry); it is also recorded in adjacent dialects of Occitan (Old Occitan cogolha "snail," Dordogne cagoulho). There are again scattered forms in Italo-Romance: kaguya, kuguya "snail" (Rovinj/Rovigno, Istrian Peninsula), concule "kind of mollusk" (Marche), koɳguyə (Abruzzi). Nearly all forms show loss of the nasal consonant and the failure of the front vowel variants to palatalize the velar consonant. Both of these changes have been ascribed to blending with another word, perhaps Latin coccum "the scale insect Kermes ilicis (thought to be a berry or excrescence on the plant)" or *cuscolium with the same sense. The result was a vowel sequence o - o, sometimes dissimilating to a - o. Another conjectural variant attested in eastern Occitan has an added stressed syllable: kakaláw "snail, empty nutshell" (Bas-Dauphiné, i.e., western Dauphiné), cacaláou "snail" (Provence), cagarol (Béziers)—see etymology and note at escargot. — Oxford Latin Dictionary has conchȳlium with long ȳ, which fits the Romance outcome, though length is not indicated for the Greek word in Liddell and Scott or the Cambridge Greek Lexicon.

Noun (3)

Middle English kokell, ultimately from Middle French coquillé wavy or rounded like a shell, from coquille