Word.ws English Dictionary

cop

/kɒp/US/kɑp/

cop verb: to capture or arrest someone.

Verb

cop (third-person singular simple present cops, present participle copping, simple past and past participle copped)

  1. (dated, informal, transitive) To capture or arrest someone.
  2. (informal, transitive, African-American Vernacular) 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, page 191
  3. (transitive) 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
  4. (slang, transitive) To see and record a railway locomotive for the first time.
  5. (transitive) 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 mine2017, Billie Eilish, Finneas O'Connell, “Copycat”, in Don't Smile at Me, performed by Billie Eilish
  6. (transitive) To adopt.
    • No need to cop a 'tude with me, junior.
  7. (intransitive, slang, usually) 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".
  8. (slang, transitive) 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, Iceberg Slim, Pimp, published 2009, page 90
    • 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 Rise and Fall of a Ghetto Celebrity, page 55
  9. (slang, transitive) To take (a look, glance, etc.).
    • Cop an eyeful of this!

Noun (1)

cop (plural cops)

  1. (informal) A police officer or prison guard.

Noun (2)

cop (plural cops)

  1. (obsolete) A spider.

Noun (3)

cop (plural cops)

  1. A quill or tube upon which silk is wound.
  2. A merlon.
  3. (historical) 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 usually considered a part of the arm guard.2004, Kevin Grace, Tom White, Cincinnati Cemeteries: The Queen City Underground, Arcadia Publishing, →ISBN, page 142
    • 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
  4. A conical ball of thread wound on to the spindle in a spinning machine.
  5. (obsolete) The top, summit, especially of a hill.
    • Cop they vſe to call / The tops of many Hils1622, Michael Drayton, “the thirtieth Song”, in The Second Part, or A Continuance of Poly-Olbion from the Eighteenth Song. […], London: […] Augustine Mathewes for Iohn Marriott, Iohn Grismand, and...

Noun (4) capitalized: COP

COP (countable and uncountable, plural COPs)

  1. (UK, abbreviation, initialism, uncountable) Initialism of close of play.
  2. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of conference of the parties; also CoP or Cop.
    • COP stands for conference of the parties under the UNFCCC, and the annual meetings have swung between fractious and soporific, interspersed with moments of high drama and the occasional triumph (the Paris agreement in 2015) and disaster (Copenhagen in 2009).2019 December 2, Fiona Harvey, “Climate crisis: what is COP and can it save the world?”, in The Guardian
    • COPs have been held in petrostates before. But fossil fuel interests appeared truly unleashed in Baku — potentially emboldened by the imminent arrival of Donald Trump in the White House, a man who has vowed to “drill, baby, drill” and pull the US out of the Paris climate agreement.2024 November 25, Laura Paddison, “The UN climate summit ended in bitterness and accusations of betrayal. Now fears are growing for its future”, in CNN
  3. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of common operational picture.
  4. (Ireland, abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of community ophthalmic physician.
  5. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of center of pressure.
  6. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of coefficient of performance.
  7. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of code of practice.
  8. (South Africa, abbreviation, initialism, marriage) Initialism of community of property.
  9. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of cholesterol oxidation product.

Proper noun capitalized: COP

COP

  1. (abbreviation) Abbreviation of ConocoPhillips.
    • The companies said the deal will make the new Conoco (COP) the largest independent oil-and-gas company in the United States, with daily production surpassing 1.5 million barrels. (Diversified oil companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron (CVX) pump more oil.)2020 October 19, Matt Egan, “The oil industry is in crisis. ConocoPhillips is doubling down”, in CNN Business

Noun (5) capitalized: CoP

CoP (plural CoPs)

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of center of pressure.
  2. Alternative letter-case form of COP (“conference of the parties”).
  3. (abbreviation, rhythmic gymnastics) Abbreviation of Code of Points.

Noun (6) capitalized: Cop

Cop (plural Cops)

  1. Alternative letter-case form of COP (“conference of the parties”).
    • Rachel Kyte, a former senior World Bank official who is now dean of the Fletcher school at Tufts University in the US, and a close observer of Cops, said the war in Ukraine and the UK’s geopolitical relations were also key reasons to go.2022 October 30, Fiona Harvey, “Global anger at Sunak’s Cop27 snub that raises fears over UK’s climate crisis stance”, in The Guardian

cop meaning in Arabic and Vietnamese

cop in Arabic

police officer (informal)
شُرْطِيّ šurṭiyy

cop in Vietnamese

police officer (informal)
cớm

Examples of cop in a sentence

  • 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, Simon & Schuster, page 10:
  • Off the juice, codeine got me trippin' copped the coupe, woke up, roof is missin'...2020, Internet Money, Gunna, Don Toliver, “Lemonade”, in B4 The Storm ft. NAV:
  • Uh, copped a BMW, new deposit, I picked up another bag Like fuck it, I'ma count while I'm in it...2021, Polo G, “RAPSTAR”, in Einer Bankz : Synco (music), Hall of Fame:
  • People see you coppin', might inspire them.2023, Nathan Bryon, Tom Melia, directed by Raine Allen-Miller, Rye Lane, spoken by Nathan (Simon Manyonda):

All 40 example sentences with cop

Synonyms of cop

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of cop

Forms of cop

Verb
third-person singular presentcops
present participlecopping
past participlecopped
pastcopped
Noun
pluralcops
pluralCOPs
pluralCoPs
pluralCops

Past tense of cop: copped

Plural of cop: cops

Origin of cop

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.

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.).

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.

Words formed from cop

Phrases with cop

15 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with cop

44 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about cop

What does cop mean?
Cop means to capture or arrest someone.
What is cop in Arabic?
Cop in Arabic is شُرْطِيّ (šurṭiyy). See Cop meaning in Arabic.
How do you use cop in a sentence?
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.
What part of speech is cop?
Cop can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce cop?
Cop is pronounced /kɒp/ (UK).
What is the past tense of cop?
The past tense of cop is copped.

Words near cop in the dictionary

  1. cooze
  2. coozes
  3. coozie
  4. coozies
  5. coozy
  6. cop
  7. cop a feel
  8. cop a load of
  9. cop a plea
  10. cop and blow
  11. cop car

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cop (page history and authors); COP (page history and authors); CoP (page history and authors); Cop (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-cop.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Kavunczyk-Cop.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-cop.wav.

Cite this entry: “cop.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cop. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.