COP (verb, noun)

/kɑp/
 Meanings
• To cop means ‘to seize’ or ‘get’.
• Followed by out, it means ‘to avoid a
responsibility’ or ‘to back out of a promise.”
• Unrelatedly, you might have heard that cop is an
informal word for a police officer and, in this
sense, the word is sometimes used figuratively
about a person who wants to regulate an activity
or behavior.
• In UK slang, often in the expression “a fair cop,” it
means capture and, always in the negative (most
often in the expression “not much cop”), it means
that something isn’t much good or isn’t of much
value.
 Example sentences
• Gillian was furious to discover that Andy had copped the
promotion she wanted.
• You promised you'd do it; you can't cop out now.
• Brad was speeding and got pulled over by a cop.
• What are you wearing? Someone should call the
fashion cops about that outfit!
• The police caught the burglar with the stolen goods on him,
so he can't say it's not a fair cop.
• I don't know why there was so much *hype about that film;
personally, I didn't think it was much cop.

• */haɪp/exaggerated publicity, advertising, or promotion

 Words often used with cop
• cop a plea (mainly US, informal): to plead guilty in
order to get a lighter sentence or to plead guilty to a
lesser charge in an attempt to have more serious
charges dropped. Example: “The police had too much
evidence on the gang boss, so he decided to cop a
plea.”
• cop a squat (US, slang, dated): take a seat. Example:
“Come on in and cop a squat!”
• cop it (UK, slang): get in trouble. Example: “When Mum
finds out you’ve broken the window, you’re really going
to cop it!”
• cop off with someone (UK, slang): to begin an amorous
relationship with someone. Example: “Apparently, Liz
copped off with Dan at the party on Saturday night.”
 In pop culture

• There are lots of TV shows featuring cops and

you may be familiar with the expression good
cop, bad cop. It refers to an interview
technique where one police officer is kind and
friendly to the suspect and the other is very
hard on them. Of course, the technique does
depend on both cops agreeing which of them
is good cop and which is bad cop.
 Did you know?

• Now archaic, although you might find it in the

names of some places or in some dialects, in
UK English, cop used to mean the top or
summit of anything and, by extension, the
head or the crest of a bird’s head. From this
meaning developed a related meaning, which
is still used, as a conical mass of yarn wound
on a spindle.
 Origin
• Cop dates back to the very early 18th century. It comes
from a northern English dialect, where it meant ‘to seize or
catch,’ much like the Scots verb cap means ‘to seize,’ and an
obsolete northern English word, cap, meant ‘to arrest.’ Its
origin is uncertain, but some linguists think it came from
the Old French caper (to take), from the Latin capere (to
take) and the Proto-Indo-European root kap– (to grasp).
Others think it may have come from the Dutch kapen (to
take), which itself can be traced back to the Old
Frisian capia (to buy), and is related to the Old
English ceapian (cheap). The noun cop, as slang for a police
officer, dates back to the mid-19th century. It is a shorter
form of copper, which appeared a few years earlier, and
comes from the verb. The expression cop out dates back to
the mid-20th century, and was originally US slang. It
probably evolved from cop a plea, which dates back to the
1920s, and uses the verbcop with its original meaning, as
well as being related to the police sense.