a gesture of defiance, disrespect, or derision. Idioms. 2. cock a / one's snook, to thumb the nose: a painter who cocks a snook at traditional techniques.
Effect on the Civil War. The importance of the Emancipation Proclamation is that it altered the cause and reasons for the Civil War. At the onset, it was about the Unionâs attempt to bring the Confederates back into the fold. With the proclamation, things changed.
Contemporary Examples. 1  The Emancipation Proclamation, as Nancy Pelosi reminds us, was an executive action. 2  But the Emancipation Proclamation set his heart beating with thoughts of immortality. 3  But historians are already preemptively dousing our enthusiasm for the Emancipation Proclamation. the proclamation issued by President Lincoln on January 1, 1863, freeing the slaves in those territories still in rebellion against the Union.