- a police officer
- Somebody call the cops!
- children playing cops and robbers
- a TV cop show
Extra ExamplesTopics Law and justicec1- Lots of children play cops and robbers.
- Penn stars as a rookie cop out to prove himself.
- The film is based on the true story of a New York cop.
- The star was stopped by traffic cops on Friday night.
Oxford Collocations DictionaryCop is used before these nouns:- car
- killer
- show
- …
Word Originearly 18th cent. (as a verb): perhaps from obsolete cap ‘arrest’, from Old French caper ‘seize’, from Latin capere. The noun is from copper ‘police officer’.
Idioms
See cop in the Oxford Advanced American Dictionaryit’s a fair cop
- (British English, informal, humorous) used by somebody who is caught doing something wrong, to say that they admit that they are wrong
not much cop
- (British English, slang) not very good
- He's not much cop as a singer.
Check pronunciation:
cop