cop

A quill or tube upon which silk is wound.

Noun

  1. A quill or tube upon which silk is wound.
  2. A merlon.
  3. A roughly dome-shaped piece of armor, especially one covering the shoulder, the elbow, or the knee.
    • […] the elbow cop or coudiere for the elbow; and the rerebrace or arriere-bras for the upper arm. The shoulder cop, pauldron or epauliere which covered the shoulder, and often a large part of the breast and back, was...
    • In the middle was a pile of armour – breastplates, helmets, vambraces, gorgets, pauldrons, cops, cuisses, sabatons, gauntlets, all mangled and ruined, ... - 2013, K. J. Parker, The Proof House, Orbit, →ISBN:
    • Tilting Cuisses 457. In the 15th century the knee cops were merged in the plate cuisses. In the East, except in Japan, knee cops as separate pieces of armor were seldom used east of Turkey. - 2013, George Cameron Stone,...
  4. A conical ball of thread wound on to the spindle in a spinning machine.
  5. The top, summit, especially of a hill.
    • Cop they vſe to call / The tops of many Hils - 1622, Michael Drayton, “the thirtieth Song”, in The Second Part, or A Continuance of Poly-Olbion from the Eighteenth Song. […], London: […] Augustine Mathewes for Iohn...

Origin

From Middle English cop, coppe, from Old English cop, copp, from Proto-West Germanic *kopp, from Proto-Germanic *kuppaz (“vault, basin, round object”), from Proto-Indo-European *gew-. Cognate with Dutch kop, German Kopf.

Forms

cops

Related

check cop not much cop

Derived

copland copper copple

Noun obsolete

  1. A spider.

Origin

From Middle English coppe, from Old English *coppe, as in ātorcoppe (“spider”, literally “venom head”), from Old English copp (“top, summit, head”), from Proto-West Germanic *kopp, from Proto-Germanic *kuppaz (“vault, round vessel, head”), from Proto-Indo-European *gew- (“to bend, curve”). Cognate with Middle Dutch koppe, kobbe (“spider”). More at cobweb.

Forms

cops

Derived

attercop

Noun informal

  1. A police officer or prison guard.

    Synonyms: 5-O alphabet barney beatsman bizzie bluebottle bluecoat blue heeler blue meanie bobby body snatcher bogey boy in blue bull bullyman buttons centenier charpering omi chazzer cobbler cop copper cozzer cracker

Origin

Short for copper (“police officer”), itself from the verb cop (“to lay hold of”) above, in reference to arresting criminals. An erroneous folk etymology derives it from the acronym “Constable On Patrol” (C.O.P.).

Forms

cops

Derived

anticop beat cop buddy cop contempt of cop copaganda cop-call cop-caller cop-calling copcam cop car cophouse copicide cop-killer cop killer cop knock copland copless coplike cop magnet cop number coppish coppy cops and robbers cop shop

Verb

  1. To capture or arrest someone.
  2. To obtain, to purchase (items including but not limited to drugs), to get hold of, to take.
    • You see yourself as the kind of guy who wakes up early on Sunday morning and steps out to cop the Times and croissants. - 1984, Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City, →ISBN, page 4:
    • He sold me a bulging paper sack full of Cambodian Red for two dolla' MPC. A strange experience, copping from a kid, but it was righteous weed. - 1995, Norman L. Russell, Doug Grad, Suicide Charlie: A Vietnam War Story,...
    • Heroin appeared on the streets of our town for the first time, and Innie watched helplessly as his sixteen-year-old brother began taking the train to Harlem to cop smack. - 2005, Martin Torgoff, Can't Find My Way Home,...
  3. To (be forced to) take; to receive; to shoulder; to bear, especially blame or punishment for a particular instance of wrongdoing.
    • When caught, he would often cop a vicious blow from his father.
    • I take no shame to fight the lame / When they deserve to cop it. - 1918, Norman Lindsay, The Magic Pudding, page 34:
    • You bust in the house, another bitch’s mouth is suckin on your man's dick What do you do: think straight? Or do you run to the back, Open the trunk to the nickel-plate 38? “Wait wait, baby, please!” That's the shit he's...
  4. To see and record a railway locomotive for the first time.
  5. To steal.
    • Copycat tryna cop my manner / Watch your back when you can't watch mine / Copycat tryna cop my glamor / Why so sad, bunny? Can't have mine - 2017, Billie Eilish, Finneas O'Connell, “Copycat”, in Don't Smile at Me,...
  6. To adopt.
    • No need to cop a 'tude with me, junior.
  7. To admit, especially to a crime or wrongdoing.
    • I already copped to the murder. What else do you want from me?
    • Harold copped to being known as "Dirty Harry".
    • He shot a guy in a bar on Martin Luther King Day and copped to first-degree manslaughter - 2005, Elmore Leonard, Mr. Paradise, page 295:
  8. To recruit a prostitute into the stable.
    • I said, 'Tell your tricks to call you here.' She laid the bearskin and freaked the joint off with her lights and other crap. Except for the fake stars it was a fair mock-up of her pad where I had copped her. - 1967,...
    • The code was to call a pimp and tell him you have his hoe plus turn over her night trap but that was bull because the HOE was out of his stable months before I copped her. - 2011, Shaheem Hargrove, Sharice Cuthrell, The...
  9. To take (a look, glance, etc.).
    • Cop an eyeful of this!

Origin

Uncertain. Perhaps from Middle English *coppen, *copen, from Old English copian (“to plunder; pillage; steal”); or possibly from Middle French caper (“to capture”), from Latin capiō (“to seize, grasp”); or possibly from Dutch kapen (“to seize, hijack”), from Old Frisian kāpia (“to buy”), whence West Frisian keapje, Saterland Frisian koopje, North Frisian koopi, kuupe. Compare also Middle English copen (“to buy”), from Middle Dutch copen.

Forms

cops copping copped

Derived

cop a feel cop a load of cop and blow cop a plea cop it cop off cop off with cop on cop oneself on cop one's whack cop onto cop out cop-out copout cop the bun cop the needle