WordGarden.iocodling
C2Pronunciation
UK
- /kˈɒdlɪŋ/
US
Meanings
Noun
a young cod or related hake fish
a small unripe apple or cooking-apple variety
Beyond the definition
A codling can be a few different things, depending on the context. In farming and gardening writing, you’ll most often see it in the phrase codling moth—a moth whose larvae bore into apples and other fruit. In seafood contexts, a codling is a young cod fish.
There’s also an older, less common sense: a codling as a person is a pampered, overprotected young person—a weakling who has been “handled too gently” and hasn’t been hardened by ordinary life. This sense can feel close to coddled, and in fact many modern readers meet it in historical or literary passages rather than everyday speech. Finally, older English uses codling/codlin for a cooking apple (or an apple picked before it is fully ripe), which helps explain why the word sometimes carries a hint of “not quite developed yet.”
"Codling" is one of those words that looks simple but splits into several meanings.
In the most practical, modern sense, you’ll encounter codling moth in discussions of orchards and home fruit trees: it’s an insect whose caterpillars infest apples (and related fruit), leaving the familiar “worm in the apple” damage. In a very different domain, a codling can also mean a young cod fish.
Then there’s the literary, old-fashioned sense applied to people. A codling (person) is a pampered weakling—someone kept too sheltered and comfortable, with the implication that the kindness has made them soft. It’s a dismissive word: the criticism isn’t just “spoiled,” but “spoiled into weakness.” You might meet it in historical fiction aimed at a sheltered heir, or in an ironic aside about someone treated like a fragile ornament.
This human sense is helped along by the word’s older connection to fruit: codling/codlin was used for a cooking apple, and more generally for an apple picked before it is fully ripe. Shakespeare plays on that idea in Twelfth Night, where Malvolio mocks a young man as being “as a squash is before ’tis a peascod, or a codling when ’tis almost an apple”—not fully formed yet, still in the in-between stage.
So if you meet “codling” in the wild, let the surrounding nouns guide you: with moth it’s orchard trouble; with cod it’s a fish; with a person it’s a pointed jab at overprotection; and with apples it may be the older idea of fruit used before it’s properly ripe.
Examples
- 1
Cooking apples
We picked a basket of codlings and baked them into a tart.
- 2
Old recipe
The old recipe says to stew the codlings with sugar and cinnamon.
- 3
Orchard pest
The orchard lost part of its crop to codling moth this year.
- Phrasecodling moth
an insect that damages apples
See also
Forms and spellings
1 form open this card.
Main spelling
- codlingnoun