Cop

How to spell cop

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce cop

What does cop mean?

1. nounAn informal term for a police officer.
2. verbTo obtain, grab, or get hold of something, often informally.

Cop in a sentence

• noun

  A cop pulled the speeding car over on the motorway.

• verb

  We tried to cop a few hours of sleep before the early flight.

• noun

  The off-duty cop still carried a badge in his wallet.

• verb

  Shoppers rushed in to cop the best deals on the first morning of the sale.

Where does cop come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word is generally traced to the verb cop meaning 'to seize, catch, or grab', which appears in English in the early eighteenth century. Most scholars connect it to Old French caper, 'to seize', which in turn rests on the Latin capere, meaning 'to take' or 'to grasp', the same root that gives us 'capture' and 'capable'. From this sense of catching wrongdoers came the slang noun for a police officer, popularised through the form 'copper', literally 'one who cops or catches', recorded by the mid nineteenth century and soon clipped back to the short 'cop'. The everyday verb sense of simply obtaining or grabbing something also survives, as in copping a bargain or copping some sleep. Because the precise route from French into English slang is hard to document, the origin is treated as probable rather than certain.

How the word is built

• cop (to seize or catch), of uncertain origin, possibly from cap- (Latin capere: to take)