warming my toothsome cockles

toothsome - I read this word in a book review today and wondered for the first time (though I'm almost positive that I've seen it used before), 'what does that mean?'

Toothsome, toothish, full of teeth... biting as in mordant, darkly witty, acerbic, or acidic? Long in the tooth as in wise or insightful? Something dense and ripe and swollen that can really be chewed upon happily for awhile? Toothsome...

Suspecting all the above could be bent to have a bit of the correct about them, I looked it up (I grew so sick of that admonition as a kid asking parents who knew the answer what a word meant, and they directed me instead to the dictionary), googling first, then webster. The answers from both: agreeable, palatable, delectable, delicious, or with strong sexual appeal. Both offered the example 'a toothsome blonde'... Guess most of my guesses were pretty far off.

Toothsome shouldn't mean delicious, should it? I get how it could mean something you could metaphorically sink your teeth into but teeth don't taste, and therefore can't judge anything but hot, cold, and chewy. Nor should it be used to describe someone attractive; there's no salacious pleasure in rolling 'toothsome' off the tongue as there is with 'sizzling,' 'voluptuous,' or even 'built like a brick shithouse.' I hear toothsome and think horse-faced. A toothsome woman? Who says that besides the guy who wrote that review? Though he did, I guess, also use the more enjoyable but equally obscure phrase 'cockle-warming'...