Other forms: canopies
The canopy is the green roof formed where treetops meet over a forest. The forest canopy, canopy cover, under the canopy.
It is the layer where most of a rainforest's life happens, and canopy research needs walkways, cranes or climbing gear to reach it. Below it come the understorey and the forest floor. Elsewhere, a canopy is any fabric or roof-like cover — a bed canopy, a canopy over the entrance — and on an aircraft the canopy is the transparent cockpit cover. Note canopied, and that a parachute's canopy is its cloth.
1nouncanopyThe green roof formed by treetops meeting.
“Almost no light reaches the ground under that canopy.”
2nounfabricA fabric or roof-like cover.
“There is a canopy over the entrance and it leaks.”
canopy is an overhead cover.
Greek konopeion was a mosquito net, from konops, a gnat. The Egyptians slept under nets, the Greeks named them after the insect, and the word rose from a net over a bed to a roof over a forest.
Ancient Greek
κωνωπεῖον — mosquito net
Latin
cōnōpēum — mosquito net, canopy
Medieval Latin
canapeum
Old French
conopé
Middle English
canapy
English, today
canopy
From Middle English canapy, canepie, canapee, canape, canope, from Old French conopé, Medieval Latin canapeum, canopeum, from Latin cōnōpēum (“mosquito net, canopy”), from Ancient Greek κωνωπεῖον (“mosquito net”), from Ancient Greek κώνωψ (“mosquito”), of unknown origin. More at Ancient Greek κώνωψ. a doublet of canapé and conopeum.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA