Cold-Cocked

Either some self-publishing romance novelists are illiterate to a degree unsuspected even by old romantics such as myself; or else the world, for all its upheavals, has continued stable enough that social media remain an inferior publicity machine to the American courts. The two possibilities are of course not mutually exclusive; in this case, the artist in question had tried to register the word "cocky" as a trademark, and had dispatched several billets-doux enjoining various rivals to unhand the heated hunk of hardened lexicality which was now to be hers alone. Unfortunately, not even the Trumpster's hydrophobic head-tribble has yet got around to granting people exclusive ownership of bits of the English language; and the panting purveyor of pulsing throbs and heaving flushes has had her doggle thoroughly de-booned by an upstanding member of the New York judiciary.