Talk:Cop

Origin
I must pass on -an- entomology from my father who was a shipboard radio operator in the employ of Radio Corporation of America, the company that supplied radio equipment with operator on a lease basis to ship operators. This was in the 1920 to 1930 timeframe when "radio" was "wireless" and the language was text and "community established" abbreviations that were in the best interest of the medium at the time. The encoding was the Arabic alphabet (caseless) with minimal punctuation and numbers translated to continuous wave durations (spark gap transmitters) forming "dots" and "dashes", not unlike "1"s and "0"s in a length optimized "packed" binary; to put it in current context.

With that as my claim of a reliable source; his "origin" of "COP" was that it was the abbreviation used in news broadcasts for Chief of Police. This would be used in the context of, for example: "NEW YORK CITY CHIEF OF POLICE CHALLENGES NEW ORLEANS CHIEF OF POLICE TO COMPETITION REGARDING PAYOFFS." would probably come across the air more like: "NYC COP CHALLENGES N. O. COP TO COMPTSHN RGRDNG PAYOFFS". As the term found it's way outside the "inner circle" of wireless operators, it degraded, dropping the "Chief of" portion for ease of use/understanding, of perhaps just laziness. Tomginva 13:45, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Gangs of New York says it was derived from the copper badges of the NY police. Too lazy to find it, but I'm pretty sure that's a reliable source. 66.212.213.236 (talk) 02:04, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

The term cop is not an acronym for "Constable on Patrol" - that's a recently coined backronym. Is this a reliable enough source to make the change? http://www.snopes.com/language/acronyms/cop.asp Josh McCartt 19:43, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I'd say yes. Acronyms of that nature are a fairly recent (post-WWI) innovation, and most claims of "this word is an acronym of so-and-so" needs to be investigated. Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronym#History Yngvarr 10:51, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I think snopes is a very reliable source. IMHO it's a bit of a gem among internet sites in the quality of its research and writing. garik 11:13, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
 * The reference notes on the Etymology section do not link to anything. Soonercary 12:27, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

The word Cop did come from the term "copper" which refered to their buttons. Old school cops had really nice uniforms that had brass or copper buttons. This has been known for some time. The entry in Wikipedia is dead wrong and should be changed.
 * Please cite references for above, so far every reliable etymology I've read says that "copper" does not refer to their buttons. Yngvarr 14:07, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I've reverted the edits by 98.196.211.86 - the referral to "copper" is false as clearly stated in the Snopes article used as a proving reference after the sentence. See my suggestions to the future editors below. Ebeili 19:24, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with your 4th point below, yet in this case "may have been derived from" only sheds doubt to a seemingly well established etymology that the Wikipedia has no need to question (and honestly I've seen no authoritative alternatives to it). The dictionaries I've consulted, Oxford, Funk & Wagnalls, and Merriam-Webster, agree without stating any doubts that it comes from the verb cop (the latter even providing a year of origin). The reason a weak statement is being used is because it's derived from a correction, but references to any corrections here should only show up in the talk or history sections. If you guys agree we could change "may have been derived from" to "is generally accepted to be derived from", removing the reference to the false acronym. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Who is like God? (talk • contribs) 14:16, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Suggestions to future editors

 * When stating something (especially something controversial) please cite the reference.
 * If you state something and cite a reference please check that the reference actually supports your statement.
 * Log-in before you edit so the issues could be discussed on your talk page.
 * Try to avoid hard statements unless you have a hard proof. Ebeili 19:24, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

WP is Not Dictionary
I feel that the whole issue falls under WP:NOT. Taemyr 06:06, 26 May 2007 (UTC).
 * I agree. Ebeili 19:24, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Snopes reigns supreme
So how long did it take for snopes readers to swoop down on this article to fix the misinformation? I must say, I practically pounced when I saw that a false etymology was attributed to Wikipedia. Blueaster 00:34, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

GETTING COPPED
In the United Kingdom, the term was in use amongst criminal fraternities to refer to the organised Thief-Takers prior to the formation of the Police Force by Sir Robert Peel. The term Capere, Latin via French, means to capture. The Stealth Ranger 12:05, 3 September 2007 (UTC)


 * you should give a citation for that seeing as there has been trouble with bad etymologies on this page. You (maybe accidentally) broke the references.(Taxxonomy 12:23, 3 September 2007 (UTC))

WILCO The Stealth Ranger 11:01, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

actually, it means to seize. capio, capere, cepi, captus are all the forms. 66.212.213.236 (talk) 03:10, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Split and remerger
On 8 May 2008, this page was split into an explicit disambiguation page and a page about the word "cop". The page about the word was a mere dictionary definition, something which Wikipedia explicitly is not. The page described only the meaning and alleged origins of the slang word. All that lexical content is already on the Wiktionary page where, frankly, the editors have better tools and resources to confirm alleged etymologies, etc. I have remerged the content and reverted the pagemove. If anyone has new information about the etymology of this word, please add it to the Wiktionary page. Thanks. Rossami (talk) 22:14, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Cop Copine Tekstil ve Çanta üzerine kurulmuş bir firma. 2003 den beri varlar. daha geniş bilgi için: http://www.cop-copine.com.tr —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.96.136.247 (talk) 12:39, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the proposal was not moved. --BDD (talk) 17:41, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Cop → Cop (disambiguation) – Police officer is clearly the primary topic for this word. Ego White Tray (talk) 03:25, 4 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Oppose. Without any evidence supporting the claim, I don't see that redirecting to a slang usage for a highly ambiguous term is helpful. older ≠ wiser 04:09, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose: Given that Wikipedia is not a dictionary, very few encyclopedia users would look up "Cop" when they want to find out about police officers. It's slang: they might want to consult a dictionary (or dictionary of slang) if they aren't familiar with the word, but it's certainly not the primary use in an encyclopedia. Pam  D  15:23, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Pam. Theoldsparkle (talk) 19:10, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Without coming down one way or another on the ultimate merits of the discussion, I note that we can have cop and COP point to separate things, and that all the uses of the lowercase term "Cop" (the bands, films, and songs) are references to the slang term for police officers. bd2412  T 04:29, 11 December 2012 (UTC)