Coward! Villain! This is a cockpit phrase; all cocks, except gamecocks, being called dunghills.
“Out, dunghill! darʹst thou brave a nobleman?”
Shakespeare: King John, iv 3.
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That is, Dare you, a dunghill cock, brave a thoroughbred gamecock?
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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.
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