Word.ws English Dictionary

wooden-top

wooden-top noun: a uniformed police officer.

Noun

wooden-top (plural wooden-tops)

  1. (UK, idiomatic, informal) A uniformed police officer.
    • Immediately a big wooden-top came in. He was young and blond.1988, Derek Raymond, The Devil's Home on Leave, Ballantine Books, page 151
    • It is Detective Chief Superintendent Cohn Harpur, one of the bosses, but just a wooden-top like all the rest.1991, Bill James, The Lolita Man, W. W. Norton & Company, page 41
    Synonyms:
    police officer

Synonyms of wooden-top

Forms of wooden-top

pluralwooden-tops
alternative formwoodentop

Origin of wooden-top

The expression may be a reference to the wooden construction of a bobby's custodian helmet.

Questions about wooden-top

What does wooden-top mean?
Wooden-top means a uniformed police officer.
What part of speech is wooden-top?
Wooden-top is a noun.
What is the plural of wooden-top?
The plural of wooden-top is wooden-tops.

Words near wooden-top in the dictionary

  1. wooden surtouts
  2. wooden wedge
  3. wooden wedges
  4. wooden-headed
  5. wooden-legged
  6. wooden-top
  7. wooden-tops
  8. Woodenbong
  9. Woodenbridge
  10. Woodend
  11. Woodend North

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wooden-top (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-wooden-top.ogg.

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