cocks

Cocks is a term with several meanings in English. The most common senses are the adult male chicken and a vulgar term for the penis. The word also appears in various technical and historical contexts.

As male chickens, cocks (also called roosters) are the adult males of the domesticated chicken species. They are typically larger and more colorful than hens and reach sexual maturity at about five to seven months. Cocks crow to establish territory and social status and participate in breeding by fertilizing eggs laid by hens. In commercial egg production, roosters are often removed from laying flocks because only hens lay eggs, though they may be kept for breeding stock or meat. In a flock, a pecking order develops, a dominance hierarchy that influences access to food and mating opportunities.

As a slang term, cock is widely used to refer to the penis in informal speech. It is considered vulgar in many formal or polite contexts and many style guides avoid it in academic writing. The term also appears in various idioms and compound words, such as “to cock a gun” (to prepare the hammer) or historical terms like “cockpit,” which originally referred to a place where roosters were kept for fighting and later came to denote the command area of a vehicle, such as an aircraft.

Other uses of the word appear in engineering and mechanics. A valve or stop that controls the flow of liquids or gas is often called a cock, as in stopcock. In general language, “cock” can appear in phrases and names rooted in older meanings related to a rooster or to fastening and aligning components.