the.com/cog
A tooth that gives its whole life pushing the tooth in front of it.
means A cog is a tooth on the rim of a wheel or gear that engages with another to transmit motion, or—figuratively—a small but functional part of a larger system or organization.
from From Middle English 'cogge,' likely borrowed from a Scandinavian source (compare Norwegian and Swedish 'kugg,' a cog-tooth). The word arrived already meaning the projecting tooth on a wheel's edge, the part that bites into its neighbor. The figurative 'cog in the machine'—a person reduced to a replaceable working part—is a much later flourish, riding in on the age of factories and great clattering mechanisms.
- name origin
- From a word meaning the projecting tooth itself
- workplace slang
- Cog in the machine: faceless interchangeable worker
- prime gearing
- Prime-numbered cogs wear teeth more evenly
- clock guts
- Cogwheels kept time long before electronics
- video game
- Cogs are villainous robots in Toontown
cogito ergo sum — descartes' 1641 philosophical principle: 'i think therefore i am'
interlocking gears — mechanical cogs in a 1769 watt steam engine that powered the industrial revolution