copse

(kŏps)

A thicket of small trees or shrubs; a coppice.

[Middle English copys, from Old French copeiz, thicket for cutting, from coper, couper, to cut; see cope¹.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

copse

(kɒps)

(Forestry) another word for coppice¹

[C16: by shortening from coppice]

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

copse

(kɒps)

also coppice

a thicket of small trees or bushes; a small wood.

[1570–80; alter. of coppice]

Copse

a thicket of underwood and small trees; the underwood of a wood or forest.

Example: copse of trees, 1578.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun

copse - a dense growth of bushes

brush, coppice, thicket, brushwood

botany, flora, vegetation - all the plant life in a particular region or period; "Pleistocene vegetation"; "the flora of southern California"; "the botany of China"

brake - an area thickly overgrown usually with one kind of plant

canebrake - a dense growth of cane (especially giant cane)

spinney - a copse that shelters game

underbrush, undergrowth, underwood - the brush (small trees and bushes and ferns etc.) growing beneath taller trees in a wood or forest

Translations

Busch

boqueteau

copse

[kɒps] N → soto m, bosquecillo m

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

copse

[ˈkɒps] n (= coppice) → taillis m

Collins English/French Electronic Resource. © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

copse

n → Wäldchen nt

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

The place fixed on for the stand-shooting was not far above a stream in a little aspen copse. On reaching the copse, Levin got out of the trap and led Oblonsky to a corner of a mossy, swampy glade, already quite free from snow.

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There was no trace of Flora on that nearer side of the bank where my observation of her had been most startling, and none on the opposite edge, where, save for a margin of some twenty yards, a thick copse came down to the water.

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On the left our troops were close to a copse, in which smoked the bonfires of our infantry who were felling wood.

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'The copse, the oxen, the lease-hold, the shop, the tavern, the house with the iron-roofed barn, and my heir,' thought he.

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They proceeded in silence along the gravel walk that led to the copse; Elizabeth was determined to make no effort for conversation with a woman who was now more than usually insolent and disagreeable.

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Every minute a fresh gun came into position until, before twilight, every copse, every row of suburban villas on the hilly slopes about Kingston and Richmond, masked an expectant black muzzle.

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It was a long, not very broad strip of cultured ground, with an alley bordered by enormous old fruit trees down the middle; there was a sort of lawn, a parterre of rose-trees, some flower-borders, and, on the far side, a thickly planted copse of lilacs, laburnums, and acacias.

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The Story Girl selected the spot for the grave, in a little corner behind the cherry copse, where early violets enskied the grass in spring, and we boys dug the grave, making it "soft and narrow," as the heroine of the old ballad wanted hers made.

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They cantered forward at as brisk a pace as Joe's charger could attain, and presently stopped in the little copse where he had left her in the morning.

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The eyes of the Sagamore moved warily from islet to islet, and copse to copse, as the canoe proceeded; and, when a clearer sheet of water permitted, his keen vision was bent along the bald rocks and impending forests that frowned upon the narrow strait.

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Arriving at a cross-ways, he thought he noticed a slight smoke rising among the trees; he stopped, looked more attentively, and saw, in the midst of a vast copse, the dark-green branches of several pine-trees.

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I returned home, and consulting with the sorrel nag, we went into a copse at some distance, where I with my knife, and he with a sharp flint, fastened very artificially after their manner, to a wooden handle, cut down several oak wattles, about the thickness of a walking-staff, and some larger pieces.

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