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Scottish National Dictionary (1700–)

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First published 1952 (SND Vol. III). Includes material from the 1976 and 2005 supplements.
This entry has not been updated since then but may contain minor corrections and revisions.

†COCK-UP, n. comb. Also ¶cocket. Applied to an arrangement of the hair, where a false pad was used to heighten the coiffure, as in Cockernony, n., 2 (Abd.²² 1936, obs.). [′kɔkʌp]Sc. 1728 Patrick Walker Remarkable Passages in the Life of Alexander Peden 145:
I remember about Thirty Years ago, when Cockups were in Fashion, some of them Half-Yard high, set with Wires; ...Sc. a.1742 H. Hecht Herd's MSS. (1904) 113:
With her corked-heel shoon And her cockets aboon.Sc. 1818 Scott H. Midlothian xxv.:
What garr'd ye busk up your cockernony that gate? — I think there's been aneugh the day to gie an awfu' warning about your cockups and your fal-lal duds — see what they a' come to.Sc. 1825 Bonnie Mally Stewart (in Chap book, printed W. Macnie, Stirling):
She took the slippers off her feet, And the cockup off her hair.Sc. 1980 Graham Tulloch The Language of Sir Walter Scott 229:
The hair-styles called cockernony ... and cock-up ... went out of fashion. ... Cock-up is interesting, partly because its demise in this sense has left room for the modern colloquial sense 'a state of affairs confused by mismanagement' - quite misleading if read into Mrs Saddletree's condemnation of her servant's 'cockups and ... fallal duds' ..., a scolding further obscured for us by the disappearance of fallal 'gaudy trippery'.ne.Sc. 1881 W. Gregor Folk-Lore N.-E. Scot. 14:
Many of the members of the human body were embodied in rhymes, commonly nursery rhymes. Here is one about the face. . . . “Chin cherry, Moo merry, Nose nappie, Ee winkie, Broo brinkie, Cock-up jinkie.”Lnk. a.1779 D. Graham Writings (1883) II. 55:
She and I cust out the day, about her cockups and blackcaps.