English[edit]Etymology[edit] From Middle English corde, from Old French corde, from Latin chorda, from Doric Ancient Greek (khord, string of gut, the string of a lyre) (compare Ionic (khord), from Proto-Indo-European *er- (bowel)). More at yarn and hernia. cord (countable and uncountable, plural cords) The burglar tied up the victim with a cord. He looped some cord around his fingers. Unerringly impelling this dead, impregnable, uninjurable wall, and this most buoyant thing within; there swims behind it all a mass of tremendous life, only to be adequately estimated as piled wood isby the cord; and all obedient to one volition, as the smallest insect