coxcomb

   In the sixteenth century this was a reference to the hat worn by a professional fool. It was like a cock’s comb in shape and colour. The word quickly came to refer to the fool himself, then took on the special meaning of a person whose foolishness is shown by his showiness and vanity, or his pretence at knowledge which he does not really possess. Perhaps the meaning of the word that has endured best relates to foppishness in dress, but this is by no means the principal meaning in Shakespeare, where the word is used with slightly different shades of meaning in several of the plays. It means fool when Emilia says to Othello: ‘O murderous coxcomb! What should such a fool/Do with so good a wife?’ The word is little used in modern times, vocatively or otherwise, though it occurs in Ngaio Marsh’s Opening Night. The speaker there who addresses another man as ‘my young coxcomb’ shows throughout the novel that he is steeped in Shakespeare.