cop.
To capture or arrest someone.
Meaning & usage
To capture or arrest someone.
To obtain, to purchase (items including but not limited to drugs), to get hold of, to take.
To (be forced to) take; to receive; to shoulder; to bear, especially blame or punishment for a particular instance of wrongdoing.
When caught, he would often cop a vicious blow from his father.
To see and record a railway locomotive for the first time.
To steal.
To adopt.
No need to cop a 'tude with me, junior.
To admit, especially to a crime or wrongdoing.
I already copped to the murder. What else do you want from me?
Harold copped to being known as "Dirty Harry".
To recruit a prostitute into the stable.
To take (a look, glance, etc.).
Cop an eyeful of this!
Where this word comes from
Uncertain. Perhaps from Middle English *coppen, *copen, from Old English copian (“to plunder; pillage; steal”); or possibly from Middle French caper (“to capture”), from Latin capiō (“to seize, grasp”); or possibly from Dutch kapen (“to seize, hijack”), from Old Frisian kāpia (“to buy”), whence West Frisian keapje, Saterland Frisian koopje, North Frisian koopi, kuupe. Compare also Middle English copen (“to buy”), from Middle Dutch copen.
A police officer or prison guard.
Where this word comes from
Short for copper (“police officer”), itself from the verb cop (“to lay hold of”) above, in reference to arresting criminals. An erroneous folk etymology derives it from the acronym “Constable On Patrol” (C.O.P.).
A spider.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English coppe, from Old English *coppe, as in ātorcoppe (“spider”, literally “venom head”), from Old English copp (“top, summit, head”), from Proto-West Germanic *kopp, from Proto-Germanic *kuppaz (“vault, round vessel, head”), from Proto-Indo-European *gew- (“to bend, curve”). Cognate with Middle Dutch koppe, kobbe (“spider”). More at cobweb.
A quill or tube upon which silk is wound.
A merlon.
A roughly dome-shaped piece of armor, especially one covering the shoulder, the elbow, or the knee.
A conical ball of thread wound on to the spindle in a spinning machine.
The top, summit, especially of a hill.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English cop, coppe, from Old English cop, copp, from Proto-West Germanic *kopp, from Proto-Germanic *kuppaz (“vault, basin, round object”), from Proto-Indo-European *gew-. Cognate with Dutch kop, German Kopf.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.