Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a lure, esp. in the form of money, designed to entice a gambler into a game, before cheating him of his own funds.

1552		G. Walker Detection of Vyle and Detestable Use of Dice Play 29: He have learned to verse, and lay in the reason well favouredly, to make the cousin stoupe all the coggs in his buy.
1619		J. Taylor ‘A Kicksey Winsey’ in Works (1869) II 37: These men can kisse their clawes, with Iack, how is’t? / And take and shake me kindely by the fist, / And put me off with dilatory cogges.
1627		J. Taylor ‘An Armado’ in Works (1869) I 85: The Friend-ship had two very small pinnaces in her squadron, named, 1. The Cogge.
1663		Wandring whores complaint 5: The fourteenth a Gamster [sic], if he see a Hick sweet / He presently drops down a Cog in the street.
1671		‘L.B.’ New Academy of Complements 205: The fourteenth a Gamester, if he sees the Hick sweet, / He present’y drops down a Cog in the street.
c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Cog, . . .the Money . . . the Sweetners drop to draw in the Bubbles.
1712		‘Black Procession’ in Farmer Musa Pedestris (1896) 39: The fourteenth a gamester, if he sees the cull sweet, / He presently drops down a cog in the street.
1729		J. Gay Polly III v: Furies! A manifest cog! I won’t be bubbled, Sir.
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Cog [...] whatsoever the sweeteners drop to draw in a bubble.
c.1800		‘Landlady Casey’ in Holloway & Black I (1975) 153: On shuffle, cog, and slip, I wink.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1821		‘An Amateur’ Real Life in London II 90: ‘What brought you here [prison]?’ ‘Driven in by the Philistines, [...] caught like a harmless dove by the Greeks—clean’d out.—By the cog, I was obliged to fly to this pigeon house, in order to avoid being cut up by my creditors; and, up to a little of the Newmarket logic, I am now crossing and justling, though it is doubtful at present who will win the race.
1834		(con. 1737–9) W.H. Ainsworth Rookwood (1857) 167: His purse and coffers would have been free from molestation, except ‘so far [...] as a cog or two of dice went’.
1869		‘Thief-Catcher’s Prophecy’ in W.H. Logan Pedlar’s Pack of Ballads 144: [as cit. 1712].

2. money.

1608		Dekker Belman of London E4: Before he play what store of Bit, he hath in his Bay, that is what money he hath in his purse, and whether it be in great Cogges or small that is, in gold or silver.
c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew.

3. that which is obtained by cheating.

1823

‘Jon Bee’ Dict. of the Turf, the Ring, the Chase, etc. 55: Cog … whatever is obtained [by fraud], is Cog too.

4. (UK gambling) a purpose-built dice-box designed to facilitate cheating in the game of Hazard.

1832

Satirist (London) 22 Jan. 31/1: [T]he numerous implements for swindling used at [hazard] [...] Cog, or Secure, / Doctor, or Close Box, Smooth Box, Dispatches, [...] The Scratch.