Cock Sure

is cocky sure—pertly confident. We call a self-confident, overbearing prig a cocky fellow, from the barnyard despot; but Shakespeare employs the phrase in the sense of “sure as the cock of a firelock.”

“We steal as in a castle, cock-sure.”—Shakespeare: 1 Henry IV., ii. 1.

⁂ The French phrase is à coup sûr, as “Nous réussirons à coup sûr,” we are certain of success, “Cela est ainsi à coup sûr,” etc., and the phrase “Sure as a gun,” seem to favour the latter derivation.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.