Word.ws English Dictionary

fair cop

fair cop noun: a justifiable or reasonable capture or apprehension; also, broadly, a just or inescapable accusation.

Noun

fair cop (plural fair cops)

  1. A justifiable or reasonable capture or apprehension; also, broadly, a just or inescapable accusation.
    • Several other witnesses gave corroborative evidence, and a constable who helped to arrest the prisoners stated that one of them, on being taken into custody, said: “Ah, well, this is a fair cop.”1891, Montagu Stephen Williams, Later Leaves: Being the Further Reminiscences of Montagu Williams, Q. C., Macmillan and Co.
    • ‘A fair cop,’ murmured Ladd feebly. ‘I give in, mister; it’s a fair cop.’1900, William Pett Ridge, A Breaker of Laws, Harper & Brothers

Forms of fair cop

pluralfair cops

Origin of fair cop

Compound of fair (“just, correct”) + cop (“capture, arrest”). Attested from the late 19th century. The cop portion is originally from Northern England and is perhaps from a regional pronunciation of the now obsolete verb cap (“to capture; to seize”). Compare Scots cap (“seize, take by force”), kep (“catch”).

Questions about fair cop

What does fair cop mean?
Fair cop means a justifiable or reasonable capture or apprehension; also, broadly, a just or inescapable accusation.
What part of speech is fair cop?
Fair cop is a noun.
What is the plural of fair cop?
The plural of fair cop is fair cops.

Words near fair cop in the dictionary

  1. fair catch
  2. fair catches
  3. fair coin
  4. fair coins
  5. fair comment
  6. fair cop
  7. fair copies
  8. fair cops
  9. fair copy
  10. fair crack of the whip
  11. fair dealing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fair 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.

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