A small bird, possibly a jackdaw or a dialectal name for certain birds; a term of unknown certain meaning now obsolete.
Possibly from 'daw' (an old word for jackdaw, from Old English 'dáwe') combined with 'cock' (male bird), though the exact formation and original meaning are unclear and may vary by region.
Medieval and Early Modern English rural vocabularies contained dozens of bird-naming conventions—'cock' could mean 'male,' 'rooster,' or be part of a compound name, making bird identification from old texts a linguistic puzzle.
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