Word.ws English Dictionary

Cope's rule

Cope's rule proper noun: a rule stating that population lineages tend to increase in body size over evolutionary time.

Proper noun

Cope's rule

  1. A rule stating that population lineages tend to increase in body size over evolutionary time.

Origin of Cope's rule

Named after American paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope. The rule was never actually stated by Cope, though he did tend to hypothesize about the occurrence of linear evolutionary trends.

Questions about Cope's rule

What does Cope's rule mean?
Cope's rule means a rule stating that population lineages tend to increase in body size over evolutionary time.
What part of speech is Cope's rule?
Cope's rule is a proper noun.

Words near Cope's rule in the dictionary

  1. Cope Cope
  2. Cope rearrangement
  3. Cope rearrangements
  4. cope with
  5. Cope's law
  6. Cope's rule
  7. copeck
  8. copecks
  9. coped
  10. coped with
  11. copedant

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Cope's rule (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.

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