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Definition of "cockcrow" [cock•crow]

  • The very beginning of the day; dawn. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "cockcrow" in a sentence
  • "The antients divided the night into different watches; the last of which was called cockcrow: and in consequence of this they kept a cock in their Tirat, or Towers, to give notice of the dawn."
  • "He, who neither drank nor smoked, who never wasted the weight of his arms in an embrace, nor the touch of his lips a second longer than the most perfunctory of kisses, who was invariably up before cockcrow and asleep ere the kerosene lamp had a tenth emptied itself, and who never thought to die, was dead even more quickly than Brother Hal and Prince Lilolilo."
  • "Early this morning I got some Conservative literature stuffed through the door, no doubt pushed through the letterbox by someone in a rush to return to his vault before cockcrow."