noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   Sickness; disease; pestilence. UK, countable, dialectal, uncountable
2. 2
   An attack of illness, such as swooning, pangs of childbirth, etc. UK, countable, dialectal, uncountable
3. 3
   A disease affecting sheep or cattle. UK, countable, dialectal, uncountable

Verb

1. 1
   To faint. intransitive
2. 2
   To give (sheep, cattle) the coe or rot. transitive

Synonyms

All synonyms

diseasediseaseill-beingtrouble

Etymology

From Middle English cothe, from Old English coþu (“disease, sickness, pestilence”), from Proto-Germanic *kuþō.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.