Explanation:

COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language) is renowned for its highly verbose, English-like syntax. Its design philosophy aimed for readability and self-documentation, making code easier to understand for business professionals and maintain over long periods. For instance, statements often use full English words like $\text{MOVE}$, $\text{ADD}$, $\text{DISPLAY}$, which resemble natural language sentences. (a) fortran: Incorrect. Fortran has a more mathematical and concise syntax, not as English-like. (b) pascal: Incorrect. Pascal is structured but not as verbose or English-like as COBOL. (c) cobol: Correct. COBOL's syntax was intentionally designed to be very close to natural English. (d) C++: Incorrect. C++ has a powerful but complex syntax derived from C, which is far from English-like. (e) none of these: Incorrect, as (c) is the correct option.