A Scottish or Northern English dialectal term for a woman's hairstyle or headdress, possibly a crest or knot of hair (archaic).
From cock (rooster, referencing the comb or crest) + nonnie (possibly related to 'nun' or a dialectal variant), appearing in Scottish and Northern English dialects. The connection to a rooster's distinctive crest likely influenced the image of an elaborate hairstyle.
The Scots had wonderfully specific words for hairstyles and headdresses—'cockernonnie' suggests a hairstyle as prominent and distinctive as a rooster's comb! These regional variants show how different parts of Britain developed completely different vocabularies for the same things.
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