Primary
''copse'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260125204041-00-⌔
copse - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
English
Noun
copse (plural copses)
- A coppice: an area of woodland managed by coppicing (periodic cutting near stump level).
- ✤ Synonym: mott
- Any thicket of small trees or shrubs, coppiced or not.
- ✤ Synonyms: thicket, bush, orchard
- ✤ Agrimonie groweth in places not tylled, in rough stone mountaynes, in hedges and Copses, and by waysides.1
- ✤ The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Among the woods and copses lose themselves,2- ✤ Three thundercloven thrones of oldest snow,/Stood sunsetflushed: and, dewed with showery drops,/Upclomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse.3
- ✤ Striking the highway beyond the little copse she skirted the dark iron palings enclosing Hare.4
- Any woodland or woodlot.
- ✤ Synonyms: stand, wood, woods
Verb
copse (third-person singular simple present copses, present participle copsing, simple past and past participle copsed)
- (transitive, horticulture) To trim or cut.
- (transitive, horticulture) To plant and preserve.
Etymology
1578, from coppice, by contraction, originally meaning “small wood grown for purposes of periodic cutting”.
Pronunciation
- IPA: /kɒps/
- Audio (Southern England): 🔊
- Homophone: cops
- Rhymes: -ɒps
Printed 2026-06-28.
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Link to original Footnotes
1578, Henry Lyte, transl., A niewe Herball or Historie of Plantes, translation of Cruydeboeck by Rembert Dodoens, page 57: ↩
1798, [William Wordsworth], “Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey”, in Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems, London: […] J[ohn] & A[rthur] Arch, […], →OCLC, page 202: ↩
1832 December (indicated as 1833), Alfred Tennyson, “The Lotos-Eaters”, in Poems, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 109: ↩
1919, Ronald Firbank, Valmouth, Duckworth (hardback edition), p19: ↩
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