this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2025
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[–] ReedReads@lemmy.zip 24 points 1 week ago

There are two parts to this. The first is the word "cockles" and the second is using the word within the specific context of "the heart".

AFAI remember, this is from medieval times. Cockle was a term given to any part of the body that was sensitive or easily affected. It was pretty widely used at the time.

Medieval doctors didn't really view the heart as a single organ but the source of all of human emotions and the place where our soul resides. So emotions like love joy and grief lived in a specific, sensitive part of the heart called the cockles. And so the cockles was a small delicate region of the "heart", and the phrase cockles of the heart referred to this emotional center.