codling
nounEtymology * Some dictionaries, including Merriam-Webster online, list Middle English querdlyng, -lyng as equivalent to modern -ling. * Some dictionaries, including Collins Online, state that the etymology is unknown.
1
A small, immature apple
- Malvolio: Not yet old enough for a man, nor yong enough for a boy: as a squash is before tis a pescod, or a Codling when tis almost an Apple: Tis with him in standing water, betweene boy and man. He is verie well-fauour'd, and he speakes verie shrewishly: One would thinke his mothers milke were scarse out of himc. 1601–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Twelfe Night, or What You Will”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene v]:
- To make Codling Cream. Take twenty fair codlings, core them, beat them in a mortar with a pint of cream, strain it into a dish, put into it some crumbs of brown bread, with a little-sack, and dish it up.1800, Hannah Glasse, Maria Wilson, “The Complete Confectioner”, in Creams, &c.:
2
Any of various greenish, elongated English apple varieties, used for cooking
- Derived terms
- codling moth