Copper

subs. (popular).—A policeman. [From COP, verb, senses 1 and 2 (q.v.), to catch, + ER; literally a catcher.] Equivalents are ROBIN or ROBIN-REDBREAST; M.P. (i.e., member of police); COPPERMAN (an Australian prison term); but for synonyms, see BEAK, to which may be added the following.

  FRENCH SYNONYMS.  Un chasse-coquin (popular: also = a ‘beadle’ and ‘bad wine.’ Literally ‘a beggar-driver’: Cf., chasse-chien = a beadle employed to drive away dogs); un chasse-noble (thieves’); le cadratin (police; a term applied to the detective force; properly what printers call an ‘em quad’); l’enplaque (thieves’); une fauvette à tête noire (thieves’: literally ‘a black-cap’); un bricul or briculé (thieves’: an inspector of police); une casserole (thieves’ = a detective; also a prostitute. Properly ‘a saucepan’ or warming-pan); un emballeur (thieves’: properly ‘a packer’); un ficard (thieves’); un arnacq or arnache (thieves’); un vesto de la cuisine (thieves’ = a detective. Vesto = haricot bean; cuisine = detective force); rabatteur de pantes (thieves’ = a beater of game, man being the quarry); un bigorneau (properly a periwinkle); un cognac (thieves’); un quart (pop: faire son quart = to be on the watch); un radis noir (common: also = a priest or devil-dodger); un renifleur (thieves’: renifler = to sniff); mari Robin (thieves’); un marchand or solliceur de lacets (thieves’: lacets = hand-cuffs); lapin ferré (a mounted policeman); un liêge (thieves’).

  GERMAN SYNONYMS.  Blaukragen (Viennese thieves’: for an armed policeman; literally ‘a blue collar,’ in allusion to the uniform); Blitzableiter (literally ‘the lightning conductor’); Bosser-Isch (a play upon words is involved in this term. It is derived from the Hebrew bosar = meat. Bosser-Isch signifies literally ‘meat-man,’ i.e., a butcher, or translated into literary German, Fleischmann. In the first half of the last century a certain Lieutenant Fleischmann was especially zealous in ‘persecuting’ the robber gangs infesting the district between Frankfurt and Darmstadt. Every hunter of rogues and vagabonds has since then been called a Bosser-Isch or Fleischmann. Hence its application to the police); Greiferci (specially applied to the ‘criminal’ police); Hadatsch or Hatschier (Viennese thieves’); aie Herren (the police force generally; literally ‘the gentlemen’); Husche, Huscher, Husskiefel or Husskopf (a mounted policeman); Iltis or Iltisch (thieves’); Kapdon (from the Hebrew kophad: literally ‘to draw together,’ or intransitively ‘to cut off’; applied to a clever policeman); Karten (the police. Cf., Garden = guards); Koberer (the officer in charge of the regulations over registered prostitutes; Koberer = ‘fancy-man,’ or ‘protector’); Klisto (a mounted policeman; from the Hanoverian gypsy glisto); Kreuzritter (Viennese thieves’ = a policeman who is also a soldier; more correctly, a police-soldier); Laileschmir (a night policeman; from the Hebrew lailo, ‘the night’); Laterne (Viennese thieves’); Lederzeug (a mounted policeman); Mischpoche (a Hebrew word signifying ‘the family,’ ‘the relations’; gang of robbers; the inmates of a prison; the police force taken as a whole); Polenk or Polente (Hanoverian slang for the police; possibly from the Gypsy polontschero = ‘the nightwatchman’ or ‘herdsman’); Poliquetsch (a term applied either to the force or to a single member); Quetsch (Cf., foregoing); Schin (an abbreviation, being the Hebrew letter ש for the turnkey of a prison, a policeman, etc.; ein platter Schin, a policeman who makes common cause with a burglar; miser Schin, a policeman who is hated); Spinatwächter (soldiers’ for a police-soldier; in allusion to the green uniform); Spitz or Spitzl (a vigilant policeman, from Spitz = pointed, from which is derived Spitz-bube, a thief); Teckel (Hanoverian for foot-police); Zaddik (from the Hebrew signifying ‘the just’ or ‘pious one’; used sarcastically as a nickname for the guardians of the right); Zenserei (Viennese thieves’: Zenserer = a police superintendent. Apparently the modern form of the old Sens, Sins, Söns, Sims, or Simser, of which the derivation is clearly to be found in Zent or Cent, from the Centenæ of the Frankish kings, who divided the counties into Centenæ and Decaniæ for the purposes of administration).

  ITALIAN SYNONYMS.  Falcon de draghetti (literally ‘a hawk preying on schoolboys’); sbirre.

  SPANISH SYNONYM.  Abrazador (m; literally ‘one who embraces’; abrazar = to hug, or clasp).

  1859.  G. W. MATSELL, Vocabulum; or, The Rogue’s Lexicon, p. 21. ‘The knuck was copped to rights, a skin full of honey was found in his kick’s poke by the COPPER when he frisked him’; [i.e.] the pickpocket was arrested, and when searched by the officer, a purse was found in his pantaloons pocket full of money.

  1864.  Manchester Courier, 13 June. The professors of slang, however, having coined the word, associate that with the metal, and as they pass a policeman they will, to annoy him, exhibit a copper coin, which is equivalent to calling the officer COPPER.

  1877.  W. H. THOMSON, Five Years’ Penal Servitude, iii. 236. ‘I daresay the COPPERS quite expected us the next night, and looked out for us.’ … COPPERS, I may inform the reader, is slang for police.

  1889.  Punch, 3 Aug., p. 49, col. 2.