Idiom Du Jour

This time, it's the colorful expression: to warm the cockles of one's heart.

What does this mean???

Actually, that's probably the wrong question...for some reason, no one misses the warm-and-fuzzy feeling this little phrase connotes.  If anything, people (at least, people who think about language) are scratching their heads wondering, "why the heck does this mean what it means?"  Well.  Excellent question.

The idiom popped up towards the end of the 1600s as to rejoice the cockles of one’s heart.  And so, this time period (the era of Enlightenment, Rennaissance, and Words Stemming From Latin and Greek) leads those in the know to suggest that 'cockles' is simply a corruption of the Latin cochleae cordis, heart's ventricles.  This implies that the whole expression is a rather plebian gaffe based on a less-than-witty academic joke.  ...yes, nerds.

However, before we call this idiom "done and dusted" (??? okay that's for next time.  I bet it's got something to do with letter-writing.), there are a few other hypotheses out there for what got this one started.  And this explanation has got some muscle behind it...or should I say mussel.  Aha.  Cockles, you see, are a type of shellfish (specifically, a bivalve mollusc) commonly eaten throughout British history and found in at least one other bit of linguistic folklore (re: contrary Mary's garden - and that's yet another story).  Allegedly, cockles, or their shells, look like hearts, or their inner chambers.  So that would lay that to rest, although not everybody buys it.

One final explanation is something that I'm not sure I buy.  I can't verify it, but supposedly a lesser-known definition of 'cockle' refers to the chamber of a baker's oven or potter's kiln.  Just possibly, through some kind of metaphoric extension, the idiomatic phrase came about from the image of a kiln heating up.  Lovely and poetic...but again, I'm not sure about the historical or linguistic truth.