COWAN

Etymology 1

Noun

cowan (plural cowans or cowanis)

A worker in unmortared stone; a stonemason who has not served an apprenticeship.

(freemasonry) A person who attempts to pass himself off as a Freemason without having experienced the rituals or going through the degrees.

(slang) A sneak; an inquisitive or prying person.

(in attributive use) Uninitiated, outside, “profane”.

Etymology 2

Noun

cowan (plural cowans)

(Scottish, obsolete, rare) A fishing-boat.

Proper noun

Cowan

A Scottish surname; an anglicization of mac Eoghainn (“son of Ewen”)

An Irish surname; an anglicization of mac Eógain (“son of Owen”)

A Jewish surname a variant of Cohen.

A city in Tennessee; named after Dr. James Benjamin Cowan, a Civil War-era doctor whose family had lived in the area since the early 1800s.

A town in New South Wales. Apparently an anglicization of a Yuin-Kuric aus-yuk word meaning “big water”.

A town in Manitoba.

A census-designated place in Stanislaus County, California, United States.

Source: Wiktionary


Cow"an (kou"an), n. Etym: [Cf. OF. couillon a coward, a cullion.]

Definition: One who works as a mason without having served a regular apprenticeship. [Scot.]

Note: Among Freemasons, it is a cant term for pretender, interloper.

Source: Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary 1913 Edition



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Word of the Day

13 November 2024

OSTENSIBLE

(adjective) appearing as such but not necessarily so; “for all his apparent wealth he had no money to pay the rent”; “the committee investigated some apparent discrepancies”; “the ostensible truth of their theories”; “his seeming honesty”


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Coffee Trivia

Coffee is a brewed drink prepared from roasted coffee beans, the seeds of berries from certain Coffea species. When coffee berries turn from green to bright red – indicating ripeness – they are picked, processed, and dried. Dried coffee seeds are roasted to varying degrees, depending on the desired flavor.

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