cockcrow

• cock-crow

From Middle English cok crowe (also as cokkes crowe), equivalent to cock +‎ crow. Likely a suppletive variation of Old English hancrǣd (“cockcrow, dawn”, literally “cock-crowing”), from hana (“cock, rooster”) + crǣd (“crowing”).

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cockcrow (countable and uncountable, plural cockcrows)

1. The time of day at which the first crow of a cockerel is heard; dawn or daybreak; first light
   • 1929, Robert Dean Frisbee, The Book of Puka-Puka, Eland, published 2019, page 175:

     I put the chief of police behind the bar, instructed him in his duties, and we four convivial spirits sprawled along the counter drinking ale and telling yarns till cockcrow.

• break of day, sunup, sparrow-fart; see also Thesaurus:dawn

• cockcrowing
• cockscrow