copse n : a dense growth of bushes [syn: brush, brushwood, coppice, thicket]

English

Pronunciation

• /kɒps/ /kQps/ a UK
• Rhymes: -ɒps
• Homophones: cops

Noun

1. A thicket of small trees or shrubs.

Quotations

• 1798, William Wordsworth, Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, lines 9-15 (for syntax)

  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,

  Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves

  'Mid groves and copses.

• 1919, Ronald Firbank, Valmouth, Duckworth, hardback edition, page 19

  Striking the highway beyond the little copse she skirted the dark iron palings enclosing Hare.

Related terms

• coppice

Translations

A copse is an English term for a small lowland woodland. It is often used as a part of a place name, for example Borthwood Copse on the Isle of Wight, or Moor Copse near Tidmarsh.

The term is derived from the similar and linked word coppice. Most woodlands which have copse as a part of their name were probably coppiced once, but this does not mean that the practice continues today, as it was once a lot more popular than it is now. As coppicing was mostly practiced in lowland England, this is the area where use of the word is most common.

However, the word has entered the language as a term simply meaning a small woodland, and perhaps implying some rustic overtones, and so it is occasionally given to new woodlands or applied to areas which have no connection with coppicing.

Distinguish from

• Cops

batch, bocage, boscage, bosk, bosket, brake, bunch, canebrake, ceja, chamisal, chaparral, clump, cluster, coppice, copsewood, covert, crop, frith, group, grouping, groupment, grove, hassock, holt, hurst, knot, lot, mess, motte, orchard, shaw, shock, slew, spinney, stook, thicket, thickset, tope, tuft, tussock, wisp, wood lot, woodlet