1713: copper Aug 23, 2019

There's a belief that the term 'copper' for police officer comes from copper badges, but this is folk etymology. Instead, it comes from the verb 'to cop', meaning 'to seize' referencing their arrests. This root is very old however, and it is also related to the modern word 'cheap', since the root word (something like 'kap-') meant 'to grab' and in other languages derivative terms sometimes mean 'to buy'.

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