Cob Money Publique Deposited
A name given in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Ireland, and subsequently in some British Colonies and possessions to the Spanish Dollar or " Piece of Eight. "
Petty, in his Political Anatomy of Ire- land, 1672 (350), refers to " Spanish pieces of eight, called cobs in Ireland. " and Dinely in his Journal of a Tour in Ireland, 1681, in the Transactions of the Kilkenny Archaeological Society (ii. II 55), says, " The most, usual money . . . is Spanish Coyne knowne here by the name of a cob, an half cob, and a quarter cob."
The word means something rounded, or forming a roundish lump.
- Frey's Dictionary (American Journal of Numismatics, Vol. 50, 1916)