The Collaborative International Dictionary
Cockshy \Cock"shy`\, n.
A game in which trinkets are set upon sticks, to be thrown at by the players; -- so called from an ancient popular sport which consisted in ``shying'' or throwing cudgels at live cocks.
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An object at which stones are flung.
``Making a cockshy of him,'' replied the hideous small boy.
--Dickens.
Wiktionary
n. 1 A game in which trinkets are set upon sticks, to be thrown at by the players; -- so called from an ancient popular sport which consisted in shying or throwing cudgels at live cocks. 2 An object at which stones are flung.
Usage examples of "cockshy".
It was my bottle of rum that those black rascals swallowed, and now that it has got their pluck up, I am to be a cockshy for that rampaging devil there, that keeps brandishing his spears about.
The gipsies return from their rambling soon after the end of hop-picking, and hold a kind of informal fair on the village green with cockshies, swings, and all the clumsy games that extract money from clumsy hands.
Corsus and those two cubs his sons drink themselves drunk within, and play at cockshies with my treasures.