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A codpiece was a flap or small pouch of cloth that men in Europe wore in the 1400s and 1500s over the opening at the front of their hose (the tight leg coverings they wore instead of trousers). It began as a practical cover, because the two legs were often separate and left a gap. Though actually it did not stay modest for long. Men it, it bright colours, and sometimes covered it with jewels, so it stuck out on purpose. It was clothes, and it was also a kind of show. You will meet the word in history books, museums, and jokes about old paintings. Nobody wears one now except actors in old-style dress. The first half is not the fish: in older English, cod could mean a bag or pouch (and, , the scrotum).
褲襠布（十五、十六世紀歐洲男裝前襠的裝飾布袋；不是魚，也不是現在運動護襠）
組成cod (old word for a bag, pouch, or the scrotum) + piece (a bit of cloth).
同家族的字
- piecethe second half: a bit or scrap of something
原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
codpiecenoun/ˈkɒdˌpiːs/
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historicalA part of male dress in the 15th and 16th centuries, worn in front of the breeches to cover the male genitals.
- , Act III, Scene III, line 130. Borachio: Seest thou not, I say, what a deformed thief this fashion is, how giddily ’a turns about all the hot-bloods between fourteen and five-and-thirty, sometimes fashioning them like Pharaoh’s soldiers in the reechy painting, sometime like god Bel’s priests in the old church-window, sometime like the shaven Hercules in the smirch’d worm-eaten tapestry, where his codpiece seems as massy as his club?
- Once Francis lifts her hand. She pulls back, half-resisting, and for one moment it seems he intends to lay her little fingers upon his unspeakable codpiece.
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A conspicuous protection for the male genitals in a suit of plate armor.
- On some suits were screwed large iron cod-pieces; these, according to tradition, were intended to prevent the ill consequences of those violent shocks received in charging, either in battle, or at a tournament. Same say, they were meant to contain sponges for receiving the water of knights, who in the heat of an engagement might not have any more convenient method of discharging it. But most probably, they were rather constructed in conformity to a reigning fashion in the make of the breeches of those times.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。