www.alphadictionary.com

• copse •

Pronunciation: kahps • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: A small grove of wild trees, a woodsy area, a thicket, an uncultivated coppice.

Notes: With the aggressive building that has been taking place in the US over the past decade, in many areas forests are becoming copses, making today's Good Word too useful to lose. It is a beautiful word (despite sounding like the plural of cop), though you couldn't say the same for its plural: copses. I know you confuse this word all the time with coppice, which is equally beautiful. The difference is that a coppice is cultivated on someone's estate, often for the purpose of cutting it for firewood and such.

In Play: One of the advantages of bucolic living is the availability of copses, a natural playground for kids: "The children loved to play in a little copse behind the house all summer." However, be careful not to confuse your copses with your coppices: "It isn't so much a copse as a coppice since we periodically harvest firewood from it and, at Christmastide, holly and mistletoe."

Word History: Today's Good Word descended from Middle English copys, from Old French copeiz "thicket for cutting", based on the verb coper, couper, "to cut". Old French inherited the word from the presumable Vulgar Latin verb colpare (no written example has been found), from Late Latin colpus "a blow". In Classical Latin the word was colaphus, borrowed from Greek kolaphos. (Sue Gillmor of Portland in the state of Maine, which is filled not only with copses but large preserved forestlands, thought to share this lovely word with us.)

(Sue Gillmor of Portland in the state of Maine, which is filled not only with copses but large preserved forestlands, thought to share this lovely word with us.)

so that's Eberntson's real name,

mark call-me-the-ferret Bailey

Well, I could play on "Don't call me Shirley!", or "a boy named Sue", but let's just say eberntson is my real name sans only a few letters.

Well, I could play on "Don't call me Shirley!", or "a boy names Sue", but let's just say eberntson is my real name sans only a few letters.

Oh, that's ric.

Might we entice our present member call_copse wish to expound on his user name in regards to this one?

Call the copse!

Down here in Tex-Mex land we call a copse a motte, pronounced "mät". I once heard a Connecticut Yankee say motte and asked how he knew the word. "I now live in Matagorda, Texas," he explained. Matagorda = fat (or big) grove (or copse). There is a source contention, however. Some opt for Matagorda = "big massacre."

And let's not forget the magnificent "Mato Grosso" in Brazil. According to Wikipedia:

"Mato Grosso (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈmatu ˈɡɾosu] – lit. "Thick Bushes") is one of the states of Brazil, the third largest in area, located in the western part of the country." The Mato Grosso is home to three different biomes and the largest wetlands in the world.

More than merely bosky!

Real Texans don't know what bosky means.

Isn't the Bosque a river that joins the Brazos in Waco. As I recall you can see the confluence from a cliff in Cameron Park.

Perry, as I recall, Cameron Park was something of a trysting place for Baylorites. I don't recall having had any inclination to see the Bosque - Brazos confluence from that vantage point. Real Texans, even those from Baylor, know what a trysting place is, whether they call it that or something else.