Cooper

How to spell cooper

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce cooper

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cooper mean?

1. nounA craftsman who makes and repairs wooden casks, barrels, and tubs.

Cooper in a sentence

• The village cooper shaped each oak stave by hand before binding it with iron hoops.

• The distillery still employs a skilled cooper to repair its ageing whisky casks.

Where does cooper come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Cooper comes ultimately from the Latin word cupa, which meant a cask, tub, or large vat for holding liquids. That same root gave English the everyday words 'cup' and 'coop', so a cup and a cooper are distant cousins built on the same idea of a vessel. The agent form entered English in the 1300s, probably reinforced by Middle Dutch 'kuper' and Middle Low German 'kuper', both meaning a barrel maker, since the Low Countries traded heavily in casks of wine, ale, and salted fish. A cooper was the skilled tradesman who shaped curved wooden staves and bound them with hoops into watertight barrels, a craft so common that Cooper became one of the most widespread English occupational surnames. The spelling keeps the double 'o' of 'coop' followed by the agent ending '-er', which is the small trap, since writers sometimes drift toward 'couper' or '-or'.

How the word is built

• coop (from Latin cupa: cask, tub)
• -er (agent suffix, one who makes)