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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].
  1. 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
  2. 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
  3. "Nature is no sentimentalist,—does not cosset or pamper us.
    — from Ralph Waldo Emerson by Oliver Wendell Holmes
  4. But Nature is no sentimentalist—does not cosset or pamper us.
    — from The Voice of Science in Nineteenth-Century LiteratureRepresentative Prose and Verse
  5. “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
  6. "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

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