copper

UK/ˈkɒpə/US/ˈkɑpəɹ/

nounB14 meanings Common in everyday speech and writing · #3,144 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: coppers

Copper is the soft red-brown metal in the wires behind your walls and the pipes under your sink. Scrape a small coin, look at the base of a good pan, look at a church roof that has gone green — all copper.

The word names the colour as well: copper hair, the copper light on a wall at the end of the day. Copper bends easily and carries electricity better than almost anything else you could afford, which is why it is in every cable in the house. Leave it out in the rain and it turns that pale green, and the green is still copper. In Britain the small brown coins are coppers, and a copper is also a police officer — a different word wearing the same spelling. Chemists write it Cu.

Definitions of copper

1nounelementA soft reddish-brown metal that bends easily and carries electricity well.B1~94%
“The pipes are copper, so they will not rust.”
2adjectivecolourOf the warm reddish-brown colour of the metal.B1~2%
“She has copper hair and very pale skin.”
3nounpolicemanA police officer. Informal, and mostly British.B2~2%
“Two coppers were standing outside the shop.”
synonyms: cop, policeman
4nouncopperA small brown coin of low value.B1~2%
“He paid in coppers from the bottom of his bag.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 180 sentences found in the wild and placed 168 of them on a sense (12 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Also practised as

Where it comes from

Copper is named after an island. Rome got its supply from Cyprus and called the stuff aes Cyprium, Cyprian metal, which wore down to cuprum — and cuprum came into Old English as coper. The policeman is a separate word altogether: cop plus -er.

Latin
cuprum — copper
Old English
coper
Middle English
coper
English, today
copper

Built from

copper · Middle English — copper ore; copper metal; bronze
copor · Old English — copper

The is Middle English coper, copper (“copper ore; copper metal; bronze”), from Old English coper, copor (“copper”), from Latin cuprum (“copper”), a of Latin aes Cyprium literally “Cyprian brass or copper”, ultimately from Ancient Greek Κῠ́προς (“Cyprus”) (a major source of copper during the Near East’s Bronze Age), from the name of a sem-nwe - goddess from the root כ־ב־ר/ك ب ر (“related to being big, large; great; or old”). a doublet of kobo. The is from an use of the noun. The is also derived from the noun. 2

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Colors, Shapes & Numbers, Materials & Substances

Practise this word

copper in the wild

Conceived as a global era, the Bronze Age follows the Neolithic ("New Stone") period, with a transition period between the two known as the Chalcolithic ("copper-Stone") Age.
Bronze Age
A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkish-orange color.
Copper
Copper extraction is the multi-stage process of obtaining copper from its ores.
Copper extraction
China alone has over half of the world's production capacity and is also the world's largest consumer of refined copper.
Copper extraction
However, the copper coinage had devalued against silver and by the 1720s liards were being exchanged in St Malo at a rate of 6 to the sou.
Jersey livre

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Definitions of copper

1nounelementA soft reddish-brown metal that bends easily and carries electricity well.B1~94%

“The pipes are copper, so they will not rust.”

2adjectivecolourOf the warm reddish-brown colour of the metal.B1~2%

“She has copper hair and very pale skin.”

3nounpolicemanA police officer. Informal, and mostly British.B2~2%

“Two coppers were standing outside the shop.”

synonyms: cop, policeman

4nouncopperA small brown coin of low value.B1~2%

“He paid in coppers from the bottom of his bag.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 180 sentences found in the wild and placed 168 of them on a sense (12 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.