Cossie

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A one-piece or two-piece garment worn for swimming or sunbathing
2. Clothing specifically designed for water activities, typically involving a tight fit
3. Apparel made to be worn in water, used for swimming, often covering the torso

Etymology: Cossie is a hybrid of two very different eras of English, and its story is mostly a matter of clipping and affection. Its base is "costume," which passed into English from French and, before that, from Italian "costume," meaning custom or habit. The Latin ancestor was "consuetudinem," a word for custom built from "consuescere," to become accustomed. So the distant root of a swimming costume is an idea about habit, not about clothing at all. The modern sense came later and by a different route. "Costume" in English first meant the customary dress of a people or period, and only afterwards came to mean a set of clothes for a particular occasion or role. The swimsuit sense is a further specialisation of that general idea of dress. The "-ie" ending is a diminutive suffix, the same one found in words like "hankie" and "movie," which turns a word into a casual, affectionate form. Clipping "costume" and adding it produced "cossie," a familiar, slightly jokey term, most common in British and Australian English.

Synonyms: swimsuit, bathing suit, swimwear