Cot

How to spell cot

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce cot

What does cot mean?

1. nounA small bed with high barred sides for a baby or young child.
2. nounA light, portable folding bed, often used for camping or for an extra guest.

Cot in a sentence

• The baby finally settled and fell asleep in the cot.

• The guest slept on a folding cot in the spare room.

• They lowered the side of the cot to lift the toddler out.

• Each soldier was issued a canvas cot for the night.

Where does cot come from?

Language of origin: Sanskrit

Cot entered English in the 1630s from the Hindi word khāṭ, meaning a light bedstead or framed bed, which itself traces back through earlier Indian languages to the Sanskrit khatvā, a couch or bedframe. English speakers picked the term up through trade and colonial contact on the Indian subcontinent, where the simple roped or framed sleeping platform was a common piece of furniture. The clipped, blunt spelling reflects how the borrowed sound was anglicised into a short, single-syllable word. Over time the sense narrowed in different directions: in British usage it came to mean a small bed with high sides for a baby, while in North America it more often means a light, portable folding bed. There is a separate, much older English word 'cot' meaning a small cottage or shelter (as in 'dovecot'), but that is a distinct Old English word and not the source of the bed sense.

How the word is built

• cot (single root noun; from Hindi khāṭ, a bedstead)

Words that sound like cot

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• caught: Past tense and past participle of 'catch': to have seized, captured, or intercepted something.