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Origin and history of cove

cove(n.1)

early 14c., "den, cave, hollow nook," from Old English cofa "small chamber, cell," from Proto-Germanic *kubon (compare Old High German kubisi "tent, hut," German Koben "pigsty," Old Norse kofi "hut, shed").

The extension of meaning to "small bay, inlet, or creek" is from 1580s, apparently via Scottish dialectal meaning "small hollow place in coastal rocks" (a survival of an Old English secondary sense). Also in early Middle English, "chamber, closet, pantry," hence the legal phrase cove and keie "right of the mistress of a household to control 'pantry and key,'" that is, to manage the household (late 13c.).

cove(n.2)

"man, person, fellow, chap," canting slang from at least 1560s, said to be from Romany (Gypsy) cova "a thing," covo "that man" [Barrère and Leland].

also from 1560s

Entries linking to cove

room(n.)

Middle English roum, from Old English rum "space, extent; sufficient space, fit occasion (to do something)," from Proto-Germanic *ruman (source also of Old Norse, Old Saxon, Old High German, Gothic rum, German Raum "space," Dutch ruim "hold of a ship, nave"), nouns formed from Germanic adjective *ruma- "roomy, spacious," from PIE root *reue- (1) "to open; space" (source also of Avestan ravah- "space," Latin rus "open country," Old Irish roi, roe "plain field," Old Church Slavonic ravinu "level," Russian ravnina "a plain").

Old English also had a frequent adjective rum "roomy, wide, long, spacious," also an adverb, rumlice "bigly, corpulently" (Middle English roumli).

The meaning "chamber, cabin" is recorded by early 14c. as a nautical term; applied by mid-15c. to interior division of a building separated by walls or partitions; the Old English word for this was cofa, ancestor of cove. The sense of "persons assembled in a room" is by 1712.

Make room "open a passage, make way" is from mid-15c. Room-service is attested from 1913; room-temperature, comfortable for the occupants of a room, is so called from 1879. Roomth "sufficient space" (1530s, with -th (2)) now is obsolete.

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    also God; Old English god "supreme being, deity; the Christian God; image of a god; godlike person," from Proto-Germanic *guthan (source also of Old Saxon, Old Frisian, Dutch god, Old High German got, German Gott, Old Norse guð, Gothic guþ), which is of uncertain origin; perhaps
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