0 to cook food, especially eggs, in water just below boiling temperature:
coddled eggs
1 to protect someone or something too much:
2 to protect and treat someone or something with great care:
Is my boy, or the boys of other people, to die while they remain here pampered and coddled?
I realise that it can be argued that we are molly-coddling the public, and so on.
We do not take the view that the nationalised industries have to be coddled—quite the opposite.
One protects them; one cossets them and coddles them with subsidies and special promotion agencies.
They are not asking to be coddled, but they point out that they simply cannot compete with a rice-bowl economy.
A first-year student going into a school for teaching practice is usually quite coddled.
We have molly-coddled the criminal too long.
The hosts, who nearly always live on the premises, provide plenty of coddling.
