copper

adj

Etymology: The noun is inherited from Middle English coper, copper (“copper ore; copper metal; bronze”), from Old English coper, copor (“copper”), from Late Latin cuprum (“copper”), a contraction of Latin aes Cyprium (literally “Cyprian brass or copper”), ultimately from Ancient Greek Κῠ́προς (Kŭ́pros, “Cyprus”) (a major source of copper during the Near East’s Bronze Age), from the name of a Northwest Semitic goddess from the root כ־ב־ר/ك ب ر (k b r) (“related to being big, large; great; or old”). Doublet of kobo. The adjective is from an attributive use of the noun. The verb is also derived from the noun. cognates * Dutch koper (“copper”) * German Kupfer (“copper”) * Icelandic kopar (“copper”)

1. Made of copper (etymology 1, noun sense 1).

   “Contrasting vividly with this ruin was the neat dresser, stained in the fashion, pale green, and with a number of copper and tin vessels below it, the wall-paper imitating blue and white tiles, and a couple of coolured supplements fluttering from the walls above the kitchen range.”

2. Having the reddish-brown colour of copper.

   “All in a hot and copper sky, / The bloody Sun, at noon, / Right up above the mast did stand, / No bigger than the Moon.”

   “Cold and terror had produced a chance in her complexion, which now wore a yellow, or sort of copper hue.”

name

1. A surname.

noun

Etymology: From cop (“ball of thread wound on to a spindle in a spinning machine”) + -er (suffix denoting things relating to the words to which the suffix is attached to).

1. A component of the cop (“conical ball of thread wound on to the spindle”) in a spinning machine.

verb

Etymology: The noun is probably derived from cop (“(informal, dated) to arrest or capture (someone)”) + -er (suffix forming agent nouns), although cop is attested slightly later. The verb is derived from the noun.

1. To inform on (someone) to the police; to nark.
2. To arrest (someone).
3. To inform on someone to the police.

   “"It's no use your staying here, because I'm not going to copper anybody," said the woman truculently. "My lodgers are respectable people; they keep themselves to themselves, and I keep myself to myself.[…]"”