Definition
An archaic Law French term, now entirely obsolete in legal usage. COSE is a corrupt or variant spelling of CHOSE — the Law French word for "thing." It appears only in early English legal materials and carries no independent legal significance apart from its identity with chose. Researchers encountering the term in historical sources should treat it as interchangeable with chose and consult that entry for substantive meaning.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To make oneself cosy; to be snug or comfortable.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not recorded as an English word in Webster's 1913.
The common English word "cose" (to the extent it exists in modern usage) has no connection whatsoever to the legal term. The legal form is strictly a variant spelling of the Law French "chose" and entered English legal writing only as a scribal or phonetic corruption. A researcher who encounters "cose" in an old manuscript or printed report should not attempt to derive meaning from any English root.
Common Confusion
COSE and CHOSE are functionally the same term; the former is simply a degraded spelling of the latter. The confusion risk runs in one direction: a researcher unfamiliar with the orthographic instability of Law French may fail to recognize "cose" as a form of "chose" and therefore miss the connection to substantive legal concepts such as chose in action or chose in possession. The reverse confusion — mistaking chose for cose — is rare because chose has remained the standard form.
Why It Matters in Research
The practical significance of this entry is almost entirely navigational. Researchers working in early English Year Books, plea rolls, or printed abridgments — particularly materials from the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries — may encounter "cose" where later sources would use "chose." Law French was never a standardized written language, and variant spellings of common terms proliferate across manuscript sources. Failing to recognize "cose" as chose can cause a researcher to misread a phrase, misclassify a legal concept, or lose the thread of an argument in an early case report.
The term is not a research destination; it is a waypoint. Any substantive inquiry prompted by encountering "cose" belongs under CHOSE, and from there under CHOSE IN ACTION or CHOSE IN POSSESSION depending on context. The Law Mind corpus may surface "cose" in digitized early materials where optical character recognition or transcription has preserved the original irregular spelling rather than silently normalizing it to "chose."
There are no jurisdictional variations, no modern statutes, and no contemporary case law that use this form. Its appearance is a signal about document age and source type, not a substantive legal category.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary identifies "cose" explicitly as a corrupt form of chose and offers no independent definition beyond that cross-reference. The entry also records the related term COSEN (to cheat), noting its appearance in Leonard's Reports with the phrase "a cosening knave" — a usage that is etymologically and legally distinct from cose/chose. Burrill does not expand on the circumstances under which the "cose" spelling arose or which particular sources favor it, which is a limitation of the entry. No other standard historical law dictionaries in the Law Mind shelf (Bouvier, Black, Tomlin's) appear to give this spelling independent treatment, suggesting that even in the era of active Law French usage, "chose" was the dominant form and "cose" was recognized as irregular.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: CHOSE; CHOSE IN ACTION; CHOSE IN POSSESSION