What part of the human heart is “the cockles?”
What part of the human heart is “the cockles?”
16 comments
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I take it from the comments that no one here, but OP and me, have heard the Denis Leary song?
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I assumed that is what prompted OP to ask!
"Maybe in the sub cockle area."
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Maybe in the kidneys, maybe even in the colon.
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Just shutup and read the post pal.
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As I understand it, they're next to the muscles, and are alive alive - oh
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A cockle is a type of shellfish. I don’t know how the association with the heart was formed, but it must be old—the Latin name for the order is “Cardiida”.
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Cockles are literally heart shaped when viewed side on. The cardioid in mathematics gets its name from the same thing and that's bulbous by comparison.
Wiktionary also suggests that "cockles" may be a corruption of cochlea(e) which is one of at least a couple of names for the heart's ventricles.
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https://wordhistories.net/2017/09/27/cockles-of-heart-origin/
TL;dr we don't know but here's some guesses!
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The pointy bit
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16 comments
There are two parts to this. The first is the word "cockles" and the second is using the word within the specific context of "the heart".
AFAI remember, this is from medieval times. Cockle was a term given to any part of the body that was sensitive or easily affected. It was pretty widely used at the time.
Medieval doctors didn't really view the heart as a single organ but the source of all of human emotions and the place where our soul resides. So emotions like love joy and grief lived in a specific, sensitive part of the heart called the cockles. And so the cockles was a small delicate region of the "heart", and the phrase cockles of the heart referred to this emotional center.