different between cozenage vs cozener

English

Etymology

cozen +? -age

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?k?z?n?d?/

Noun

cozenage (countable and uncountable, plural cozenages)

1. The fact or practice of cozening; cheating, deception.
   • 1896, Frederick Locker-Lampson, My Confidences, An Autobiographical Sketch Addressed to my Descendants (London: Smith, Elder & Co.), pp 413–14.

     I ask you, What is human life? Is it not a maimed happiness—care and weariness, weariness and care, with a baseless expectation, the strange cozenage of a brighter tomorrow?

2. An instance of cozening; a scam.
   • 1646, John Suckling, Fragmenta Aurea, Letter I, reprinted in The Works of Sir John Suckling: Containing His Poems, Letters, and Plays (Dublin: O. Nelson, 1766), p. 109:

     When I receive your Lines, my dear Princess, and find there Expressions of a Passion; though Reason and my own Immerit tell me, it must not be for me; yet is the Cozenage so pleasing to me, that I (brib'd by my own Desires) believe them still before the other.

English

Alternative forms

• (16th century): cosener, cosiner, cousoner, coosener, cossoner, cousener
• (17th century): cos’ner, cosener, cosiner, couzener, coz’ner, cozoner

Etymology

cozen +? -er

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: k??z?n?r, k?z?n?r, IPA^(key): /?k?z?n?/, /?k?zn?/

Noun

cozener (plural cozeners)

1. An imposter, a swindler.

Related terms

• cozen
• cozenage

References

• “cozener” listed in the Oxford English Dictionary [2nd ed., 1989]