It's the Word of the Day podcast for January 11th.

Today's word is cousin, spelled C-O-Z-E-N.

Cousin is a verb.

To cousin someone is to deceive, win-over, or induce them to do something by coaxing or trickery.

Here's the word used in a sentence from the News Gazette of Lexington, Virginia.

It's only office seekers with no real solutions who rely on cozening the voter.

Despite its resemblance to the adjective cozy, the verb cousin has nothing to do with

being comfortable. Used in contexts relating to deception or inducement by clever coaxing or trickery,

the word is believed to come ultimately from the Italian word for a horse trader, Cazone.

Horse trading, as in the actual swapping of horses,

often involves bargaining and compromise, and in fact, the term horse trade has come to refer to

any shrewd negotiation, whether it involves equines or no. Horse traders have historically had

a reputation for being less than completely transparent

in negotiations, which explains the likely connection between Kotzone and cousins' use in

deceiving or winning someone to one's cause through trickery. With your word of the day, I'm

Peter Salkalovsky.

Visit Miriamwebster.com today for definitions, wordplay, and trending word lookups.