Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Warm the cockles of my heart

My first question about this phrase is: what the heck are cockles? My second: how did this reference to high-temperature heart cockles come about anyway?

Let's find out....

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A quick hop over to the Grammarist yields the following:

To warm the cockles of one’s heart means to bestow a feeling of contentment, to kindle warm feelings in a person, especially of happiness and felicity. The term warm the cockles of one’s heart dates back to the mid-1600s, a time when scientific texts were often written in Latin. The Latin term cochleae cordis means ventricles of the heart, and most probably, the word cochleae was corrupted as cockles. This may have been a mistake made by the less learned, or a deliberate joke. Add in the fact that the bivalve mollusk known as a cockle is shaped somewhat like a heart, and the idea of the phrase cockles of one’s heart being more or less a joke gains credence.

My copy of The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer agrees with the Latin origin for cockles and when the phrase first came into use. World Wide Words has its own approach, starting its entry with:

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. 

Awww. I like that! A very heart-warming observation. WWW then adds, "But what are the cockles? We’re not sure."

Uh-oh. "Not sure" is not what I wanted to read.

WWW offers the same possible explanations as Grammarist, with some additional fillips, including the fact that the earliest form of the saying was rejoice the cockles of one’s heart. The WWW exploration of the idiom concludes by noting that cochlea in Latin is the word for a snail and suggesting that perhaps we should really be speaking of warming the snails of one’s heart.

Snails?? Uh, no. Just... no.

A case of overheated cockles?
Image by 0fjd125gk87 from Pixabay