…about the phrase “warm the cockles of your heart”? Someone just said it on the radio, and though I’ve heard it many times, it struck me as funny at the moment. What the heck does it mean, really? Where did it come from? I know I could google, but impress me with your knowledge instead…
Cockles are…clams?
I like that one…warm the clams of your heart 
But I thought that cockles were clams too…bleh, does this mean that I’m going to have to google?
Nah, I never wonder: First I’d have to have a heart.
Loren
here’s one for you ad:
COCKLES OF YOUR HEART
[Q] “I’m curious about the idiom warm the cockles of your heart.”
[A] It’s one of the more lovely idioms in the language, isn’t it? Something that warms the cockles of one’s heart induces a glow of pleasure, sympathy, affection, or some such similar emotion. What gets warmed is the innermost part of one’s being. It’s not that surprising that it should be associated with the heart, that being the presumed seat of the emotions for most people. But what are the cockles?We’re not sure. We do know that the expression turns up first in the middle of the seventeenth century, and that the earliest form of the idiom was rejoice the cockles of one’s heart.
Cockles are a type of bivalve mollusc, once a staple part of the diet for many British people (you may recall that Sweet Molly Malone once wheeled her wheelbarrow through Dublin’s fair city, crying “cockles and mussels, alive, alive oh!”). They are frequently heart-shaped (their formal zoological genus was at one time Cardium, of the heart), with ribbed shells.
It may be that the shape and spiral ribbing of the ventricles of the heart reminded surgeons of the two valves of the cockle. But I can’t find an example of the word cockle being applied to the heart outside this expression, which makes me suspicious of this explanation. It may be that the shape of the cockleshell, suggesting the heart as it so obviously does, gave rise to cockles of the heart as an expansion.
After this piece appeared in the Newsletter, James Woodfield pointed out that there is another possible explanation. In medieval Latin, the ventricles of the heart were at times called cochleae cordis, where the second word is an inflected form of cor, heart. Those unversed in Latin could have misinterpreted cochleae as cockles, or it might have started out as a university in-joke. Oddly, cochlea in Latin is the word for a snail (from the shape of the ventricles—it’s also the name given to the spiral cavity of the inner ear), so if this story is right we should really be speaking of warming the snails of one’s heart.
The Wizard might have one for you.
Ahh, what’s the point though? Some woman always ends up getting a hold of the damn thing and then promptly goes about tearing it up faster than a pitbull can devour his owner.
Nah, life’s much easier without a heart. Now a brain, there’s something I could use, maybe keep me out of trouble in the first place. :roll:
Loren
Cockles are a type of bivalve mollusc, once a staple part of the diet for many British people (you may recall that Sweet Molly Malone once wheeled her wheelbarrow through Dublin’s fair city, crying “cockles and mussels, alive, alive oh!”).
Um…Dublin is a British city now?
Good man Cran. 
Slan,
D.
oops…I read through it quickly and missed that! I of all people would never call Dublin a British city. I would tend to think that all of my relatives would roll in their graves
You don’t have to be Irish or a Brit to know about Sweet Molly Malone.
“She died of a favor, and nothing could save her…”
I always wondered about that.
Excellent accent Nano, ten out of ten !!
Slan,
D.
Sinéad O’Connor’s version of Molly Malone is astonishingly…soft and creepy and beautiful at the same time.
In the liner notes of her Trad album, she explained why the song was so special to her…
In Dublins Fair City she is known as the “Tart with the Cart.”
Dunno what they call the little fella in her basket 
Slan,
D. 
Didn’t know she sold melons, too!
♪♫♪♫ I had Dublin misperceivage
Till she showed me her cleavage
She opened my eyes
That sweet Tart with the Cart ♪♫♪♫
Okay…pretty bad…nevermind
Cheers,
David
Somehow, it’s not quite the way I pictured the old girl.
Will O’Ban
If I am not mistaken, that looks like Yoda gettin’ the ride from the Tart with the Cart. 