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

15 November 2024

HISTOLOGICALLY

(adverb) involving the use of histology or histological techniques; “histologically identifiable structures”


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Coffee Trivia

According to Guinness World Records, the most massive cup of coffee contained 22,739.14 liters and was created by Alcaldía Municipal de Chinchiná (Colombia) at Parque de Bolívar, Chinchiná, Caldas, Colombia, on 15 June 2019. Fifty people worked for more than a month to build this giant cup. The drink prepared was Arabic coffee.

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