Codded

Part of speech: adjective, verb

Definitions

1. To have carefully or gently cooked food, typically eggs, by heating them slowly in water; to have treated or cared for someone in an overly protective or indulgent way; to have enclosed or wrapped something securely or snugly
2. The act of soft cooking by immersing in hot water without boiling; the process of pampering or shielding a person from difficulty; the action of enclosing or covering an object with care
3. To prepare by mild heating in water to achieve a tender texture; to provide excessive comfort or leniency to an individual; to surround or encase something so it is protected or confined

Etymology: The verb "to cod," meaning to cook in water, is a rare and odd relative of the fish name, and the two share no real meaning. The fish name "cod" is the older and more widely known of the two, going back to a much earlier English word whose origins are unclear. The verb is a separate word whose link to the bag sense is what matters here: in older English, "cod" meant a bag or pouch, and a pouch is a loose, swelling shape. Enclosing food in a cloth bag and dropping it into boiling water was one way of cooking, and "to cod" grew out of that practice. "Codded" is simply the past tense and past participle of this verb, so it describes something that has been cooked in water. The bag sense itself came from an older Germanic root meaning "to bend" or "to curve," which is also the source of words for cushion and pillow in several northern European languages.

Synonyms: boiled, steamed, poached, soft-cooked

Antonyms: raw, uncooked, hard-boiled