An archaic or dialectal past tense form, possibly related to 'cast' or 'cost,' though its precise meaning and use are uncertain.
Possibly from Old English 'coste' or related to Middle English past tenses. May be a dialectal variant of 'cast,' 'cost,' or other verbs, reflecting pre-standardization English spelling and conjugation variation.
Words like 'coost' are ghosts in the historical record—they appear once or twice in old texts and vanish, leaving linguists unable to confirm they were ever really used or if they were scribal errors.
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