cozenage

plural cozenages · alternative cousenage

1. uncountableThe fact or practice of cozening; cheating, deception.

   They ſay this tovvne is full of coſenage: / As nimble Iuglers that deceiue the eie: […]

   c. 1594 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Comedie of Errors”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii], page 87, column 1

   1 more example

   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?

   1896, Frederick Locker-Lampson, My Confidences, An Autobiographical Sketch Addressed to my Descendants, London: Smith, Elder & Co., pages 413–14

2. countableAn instance of cozening; a scam.

   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.

   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