Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also cogs, coods) in pl., the testicles [the term was SE until 19C, when Victorian language prudery rendered it taboo].

1566		G. Gascoigne (trans.) Supposes II iv: cleander: If I quite him not for this gear! dulippo: And that you are bursten in the cods.
1622		Beaumont & Fletcher Beggar’s Bush III i: I grip’d him then speedily, and I whipt off his Cods.
1658		Mennis & Smith ‘The Sowgelders Song’ Wit Restor’d (1817) 295: It was my great chance / To meet with a gray coat that lay in a Trance, / I took him and I graspt him fast by the codds.
c.1665		Rochester ‘To a Lady in a Letter’ in Works (1999) 25: How empty [....] / The heads of your Admirers are / See that their Codds be full.
1680		School of Venus (2004) 12: The Woman play with him [...] stroaks his Arse and Cods .
1700		‘Sir William Butler’s Bald Colt’ in Playford Pills to Purge Melancholy II 269: If he hadn’t claw’d his Arse with Birch, / He had firk’d his Cods with Holly.
1709		N. Chorier (trans.) of Meursius ‘The Delights of Venus’ in Cabinet of Love (1739) 192: The Balls hang dangling in their hairy Cods / From whence proceed the Spring of tickling Floods.
1718		G. Jacob Treatise of Hermaphrodites 7: They have a Slit not so deep as the first Sort, which being in the midst of the Cods, presses the Testicles on each side.
a.1749		Robertson of Struan ‘To Mr. Wright’ in Poems (1752) 99: Your Head is not empty / No more than your Cods.
1762		Bridges Homer Travestie (1764) I 125: Tho by thy help, I think ’tis odds, / But yet I singe the rascal’s c—ds.
1786		C. Morris ‘The Great Plenipotentiary’ Collection of Songs (1788) 46: Peg swore by the Gods that the Mussulman’s cods / Were big as the buttocks of Mary!
c.1786		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue ms. additions .
1798		‘Newly Dubb’d Jew’ in Hilaria 36: And Cods swore his friend P[ego] should sleep in a whole skin .
c.1800		Burns ‘The Bonniest Lass’ in Merry Muses of Caledonia 90: King David, when he waxed auld, / An’s bluid ran thin, an’ a’ that, / An’ fand his cods were growin’ cauld, / Could not refrain, for a’ that.
1834		‘We Did, What’s a Very Naughty Name’ in Flash Minstrel! in Spedding & Watt (eds) Bawdy Songbooks (2011) I 124: If a customer pass, / I vhips round my ass, / And shews ’em a fine pair of cods!
c.1850		The C — , The Open C — [broadside] And work it in and work it out, /And shake my c—ds till their brains fly out.
1870		Cythera’s Hymnal 4: My cods [she[ began to stroke.
1888–94		‘Walter’ My Secret Life (1966) I 162: Pull your cods about well, and I warrant Harriet will look as long as she can.
1896		Farmer Vocabula Amatoria (1966) 2: Accessoires (les) m. The testicles; ‘the cods’.
c.1900		‘Ramrod’ Nocturnal Meeting 34: It will give me the greatest pleasure to suck just another lot straight out of your cods.
1925		E. Field ‘A French Crisis’ in Facetiae Americana 17: She was as foul a minx / As ever fondled scabby cods.
1941		in G. Legman Limerick (1953) 301: A patrician young fellow named Lear / Used to wash off his bollox with beer. / Said he, ‘By the gods, / This is good for the cods.’.
1957		D. Niland Call Me When the Cross Turns Over (1958) 195: ‘Kick ’em in the cods, Barbie,’ her father told her.
1963–74		B. Humphries Barry McKenzie [comic strip] in Complete Barry McKenzie (1988) 108: I [...] nearly ruptured me cods gettin’ her upstairs.
1978		J. Dingwall Sun. Too Far Away 46: I’ll kick him in the cods.
1984		‘Derek Raymond’ He Died with His Eyes Open 55: The last thing a driver wants is to work is cogs off and still get done by the Inland Revenue.
1986		R.G. Barrett Godson 58: ‘I kneed the bounder in the cods’.
[1989		M. Walker How to Kiss a Crocodile 140: What would the game be without the cherry, the cod, the golden kookaburra, or in plain English - the cricket ball?].
1989		M. Amis London Fields 308: Not been in there five minutes and she’s smacking your cods all over the park.
1993		Aus. Word Map 🌐 coods testicles [...] ‘I grew up in the central wheatbelt of W[estern] A[australia] and we were always referring to coods in this context. It was definitely a popular word’.
2002		(con. WWII) R. Mooney Father of the Man Prologue: ‘Balls,’ Conklin explained, ‘sometimes referred to as nuts, gonads, stones, rocks, cods, cullions, bollocks, family jewels, or – for the learned among us – testicles or testes.’.
2019		P. Baker Fabulosa 290/2: cods testicles.

2. a curate [play on sense 1].

1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Cods, nick name for a curate. A rude fellow meeting a curate, mistook him for the rector; and accosted him with the vulgar appelation of, Bol—ks the rector, No, Sir, answered he, only Cods the curate, at your service.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.