kopje
/kəʊpi/
kopje noun: a small hill or mound, especially on the African veld.
Noun
kopje (plural kopjes)
- A small hill or mound, especially on the African veld.
- In one spot only was the solemn monotony of the plain broken. Near the center a small solitary “kopje” rose. Alone it lay there, a heap of round ironstones piled one upon the other, as over some giant’s grave.1883 June, Ralph Iron [pseudonym; Olive Schreiner], “Shadows from Child-life. The Watch.”, in The Story of an African Farm, 2nd edition, New York, N.Y.: H. M. Caldwell Company, →OCLC, part I, page 9
- We selected a lichenous kopje perhaps fifteen yards away, and landed neatly on its summit one after the other.1900 December – 1901 August, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, “Prospecting Begins”, in The First Men in the Moon, London: George Newnes, […], published 1901, →OCLC, page 105
Examples of kopje in a sentence
- Like a cat he scaled the precipitous sides of the frowning granite kopje.1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 206:
- Martha looked over a mile or so of bush to a strip of pink ploughed land; […] and then, ridge after ridge, fold after fold, the bush stretched to a line of blue kopjes.1952, Doris Lessing, Martha Quest, Panther, published 1974, page 8:
Forms of kopje
| plural | kopjes |
|---|---|
| alternative form | koppie |
Origin of kopje
From (South African) Dutch kopje, diminutive of kop (“head”).
Questions about kopje
- What does kopje mean?
- Kopje means a small hill or mound, especially on the African veld.
- How do you use kopje in a sentence?
- Like a cat he scaled the precipitous sides of the frowning granite kopje.
- What part of speech is kopje?
- Kopje is a noun.
- How do you pronounce kopje?
- Kopje is pronounced /kəʊpi/.
- What is the plural of kopje?
- The plural of kopje is kopjes.
Words near kopje in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: kopje (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:
Cite this entry: “kopje.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kopje. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.