warm the cockles of someone's heart
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Give someone a feeling of pleasure or delight
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
mang lại cảm giác vui sướng hoặc hạnh phúc cho ai đó
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: warm the inner ventricles of the heart
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
If this was not a government - inspired and briefed story, it must have warmed the cockles of the Ministry's heart.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “warm the cockles of someone's heart” mean?
Give someone a feeling of pleasure or delight Literally: warm the inner ventricles of the heart
Is “warm the cockles of someone's heart” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.