"Cosyn" and "Cosynage": Complicated Punning in Chaucer's "Shipman's Tale."

Author / Editor
Fisher, Ruth M.

Title
"Cosyn" and "Cosynage": Complicated Punning in Chaucer's "Shipman's Tale."

Published
Notes and Queries 210 (1965): 168-70.

Description
Adduces precedents in French for Chaucer's punning in ShT on "cosyn" and its derivatives to mean "harlot" as well as "prospective victim," part of a larger pattern of "mocking irony" in his various uses of the words.

Chaucer Subjects
Shipman and His Tale
Language and Word Studies