Literary notes about Cosset (AI summary)
In literature the term "cosset" is often employed to evoke an image of tender, deliberate care—whether that care is bestowed upon a vulnerable animal, a young child, or even an adult in need of comfort. Writers use the verb to imply not only physical pampering, as when a beloved lamb or calf is raised with attentive affection [1, 2], but also to offer a subtle critique of overindulgence, suggesting that constant coddling might undermine natural strength or self-sufficiency [3, 4]. At times the word functions both as an expression of fondness and as a sardonic commentary on those who are excessively nurtured and thereby less resilient [5, 6].
- When but a small lad my step-father gave me a cosset lamb which I raised with a promise from him to give me half the wool and all of the increase.
— from Twenty Years of Hus'ling by J. P. (James Perry) Johnston - IF thou wilt close thy drowsy eyes, My mulberry one, my golden son, The rose shall sing thee lullabies, My pretty cosset lambkin!
— from Second Book of Verse by Eugene Field - "Nature is no sentimentalist,—does not cosset or pamper us.
— from Ralph Waldo Emerson by Oliver Wendell Holmes - But Nature is no sentimentalist—does not cosset or pamper us.
— from The Voice of Science in Nineteenth-Century LiteratureRepresentative Prose and Verse - “So you may, and I will feed you as if you were my cosset lamb.”
— from The History of Margaret Catchpole, a Suffolk Girl by Richard Cobbold - "No, no," said Captain Ridley; "the boy has been made too much of a pet and cosset already.
— from The Rival Crusoes; Or, The Ship Wreck
Also A Voyage to Norway; and The Fisherman's Cottage. by Agnes Strickland