Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Cocoon |
CocoonNoun1. Silky envelope spun by the larvae of many insects to protect pupas and by spiders to protect eggs. Verb1. Wrap in or as if in a cocoon. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "cocoon" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1686. (references) |
Etymology: Cocoon \Co*coon"\, noun. [French expression cocon, diminutive of coque shell of egge and insects, from the Latin expression concha mussel shell. See Conch.]. (references) |
| Domain | Definition |
Industry | An oval casing or sheel about one inch long of white, yellow or brown raw silk spun by the silkworm, as a protective covering. Source: European Union. (references) |
Chemical Industry | Any covering resembling or suggesting a cocoon. Source: European Union. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
A cocoon is a casing spun of silk by caterpillars and certain other insect larvae. Butterfly caterpillers do not spin cocoons. Some caterpillars attach small twigs, fecal pellets or pieces of vegetation to the outside of their cocoon in an attempt to disguise it from predators. Others spin their cocoon in a concealed location - on the underside of a leaf, in a crevice, or down near the base of a treetrunk.
Silkworm cocoons are processed and used to produce natural silk for clothing.
See also: Cocoon (movie)
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Cocoon."
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Infant | Child, bairn, little one, brat, chit, pickaninny, urchin; bantling, bratling; elf. youth, boy, lad, stripling, youngster, youngun, younker, callant, whipster, whippersnapper, whiffet, schoolboy, hobbledehoy, hopeful, cadet, minor, master. scion; sap, seedling; tendril, olive branch, nestling, chicken, larva, chrysalis, tadpole, whelp, cub, pullet, fry, callow; codlin,codling; foetus, calf, colt, pup, foal, kitten; lamb, lambkin; aurelia, caterpillar, cocoon, nymph, nympha, orphan, pupa, staddle. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Cocoon |
| English words defined with "cocoon": Cappadine, chrysalis ♦ Dupion ♦ giant silkworm ♦ Kell, Knubs ♦ Mason moth ♦ Promethea ♦ silkworm, Spun silk ♦ wild wilkworm. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "cocoon": frison ♦ grege silk ♦ Neri silk ♦ spinning a cocoon ♦ to kill silk cocoons, to smother silk cocoons. (references) |
| Non-English Usage: "Cocoon" is also a word in the following language with the English translation in parentheses. Manx (cocoon). |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | She sleeps hanging from a ramp in the ceiling, wrapped in a cocoon of her own wings (Scrubs; writing credit: Gabrielle Allan; Janae Bakken) | |
Movie/TV Titles | Hawaii Five-O: Cocoon (1968) The Golden Cocoon (1926) Jade Cocoon 2 (2001) Cocoon (1985) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title | ||
Books |
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Theater & Movies | |||
Music |
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High Tech |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit |  | A unique peanut-shaped cocoon of dust, called a reflection nebula, surrounds a cluster of ... Credit: NASA. |
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
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| "A moth is born 4" by Kd Kelly Commentary: "This moth had just come out of his cocoon, it took about an hour for his wings to dry and straighten out. he is sitting on a two x four. on the four inch side. big bug." | "Black Swallowtail" by Stephanie Summerfield Commentary: "This butterfly just hatched from its cocoon." |
Source: photographs selected by the editor, with permission from the photographers. | |
| Author | Quotation |
James Russell Lowell | The mind can weave itself warmly in the cocoon of its own thoughts, and dwell a hermit anywhere. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | |
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Travel | Zimbabwe | The Zimbabwean business community is nearly fully emerged from the cocoon of 15 years of isolation caused by international sanctions during the 1965-80 "Unilateral Declaration of Independence" period and the statist socialist policies during the first decade of Zimbabwe's independence. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Cocoon" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 100.00% of the time. "Cocoon" is used about 97 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 100% | 97 | 33,269 |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expressions using "cocoon": cocoon filament ♦ cocoon unsuitable for reeling ♦ silkworm cocoon ♦ spinning a cocoon. Additional references. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "cocoon"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Albanian | fshikëz (bladder, follicle, vesicle). (various references) | |
Arabic | لف بعناية, غطاء واق (boot, panoply), الفيلجة, شرنقة. (various references) | |
Bulgarian | какавида (chrysalis, nymph, pupa), пашкул (chrysalis, follicle, shell). (various references) | |
Chinese | 茧, 繭 . (various references) | |
Czech | zámotek (pod, Ravel), kokon (pod). (various references) | |
Danish | stripmaling (strippable film paint), kokon. (various references) | |
Dutch | cocon. (various references) | |
Esperanto | kokono. (various references) | |
Farsi | پیله کرم ابریشم , پیله . (various references) | |
Finnish | kotelokoppa. (various references) | |
French | cocon. (various references) | |
German | kokon. (various references) | |
Greek | κουκούλι. (various references) | |
Hebrew | פקעת של תולעת משי. (various references) | |
Hungarian | selyemgubó, báb (chrysalis, dummy, marionett, marionette, obtect pupa, pupa, puppet, tool). (various references) | |
Indonesian | kepompong (chrysalis, nymph, pupa). (various references) | |
Irish | cocún. (various references) | |
Italian | bozzolo (strippable film paint). (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | 繭. (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | まゆ (eyebrow). (various references) | |
Korean | 고치. (various references) | |
Manx | cocooney, cocoon. (various references) | |
Norwegian | kokong. (various references) | |
Pig Latin | ocooncay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | casulo (boll, cockleboat, follicle, pod). (various references) | |
Romanian | cocon (follicle), gogoaşã (cock and bull story, dough-boy, doughnut, fibs, follicle). (various references) | |
Russian | кокон (case-worm, chrysalis, pod). (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | čaura (capsule, cartridge, cartridge case, liner). (various references) | |
Spanish | capullo (bud, pod). (various references) | |
Swedish | kokong. (various references) | |
Turkish | sarmak (bandage, begird, beset, bind, bundle, cincture, clothe, coat, coil, coil up, compass, do up, embrace, encircle, enclasp, encompass, enfold, enlace, entwine, entwist, envelop, enwrap, fold, fold up, furl, gird, hem about, hem around, hem in, infold, intwine, invest, involve, lap, overgrow, pack, reel, reel up, robe, roll, roll up, sheet, smother in, stalk, strap, surround, swaddle, swathe, tuck in, tuck up, twine, twist, whirl, wind, wind up, wrap, wrap up), koza oluşturmak, koza (pod), koruyucu tabaka (boot), korumak (buffer, charm, conserve, convoy, cover, defend, embosom, embower, encourage, escort, fence, guard, indemnify, keep, keep guard, maintain, patronize, preserve, protect, safeguard, save, screen, secure, shade, shelter, shield, spare, sponsor, vindicate, ward). (various references) | |
Turkmen | pile. (various references) | |
Ukrainian | робити кокон, кокон (case worm). (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
| Language | Period | Translations |
| Greek | 700 BCE-300 CE | kokkos. (various references) |
| Latin | 500 BCE-Modern | coccum. (various references) |
| Old French | 900-1400 | coque. (various references) |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "cocoon": cocooned, cocooning, cocoonings, cocoons. (additional references) | |
| |
"Cocoon" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Boccalon, Bocodon, Ceccano, cecconi, celcon, Cichon, Cimcon, cocan, coccoon, cochon, cocod, cocok, cocom, cocot, Cocoyo, Comcon, coocoo, coocoon, coooo, cooool, Cooxon, Cosson, Coxon, crocean, cubozoan. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "cocoon" (pronounced kukuw"n) |
| 3 | -k uw" n | coon, raccoon, tycoon. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "c-c-n-o-o-o" | |
-2 letters: coco, coon. | |
-3 letters: con, coo, noo. | |
-4 letters: no, on. | |
| Words containing the letters "c-c-n-o-o-o" | |
+1 letter: cocoons. | |
+2 letters: cocooned. | |
+3 letters: cocooning, gonococci, oncologic. | |
+4 letters: cocoonings, conchology, concoction, cosmogonic, gonococcal, gonococcus, iconoscope, nontobacco. | |
+5 letters: cacophonous, chronologic, collocation, concoctions, convocation, iconoscopes, monochromic, noneconomic, nontobaccos, oncological. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Crosswords 3. Usage: Modern 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Images: Slideshow 6. Images: Photo Album 7. Images: Digital Art 8. Quotations: Familiar | 9. Quotations: Non-fiction 10. Usage Frequency 11. Expressions 12. Expressions: Internet | 13. Translations: Modern 14. Translations: Ancient 15. Derivations 16. Rhymes | 17. Anagrams 18. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
