copse

1578, from coppice, by contraction, originally meaning “small wood grown for purposes of periodic cutting”.

• IPA^(key): /kɒps/
• Rhymes: -ɒps
• Homophone: cops

copse (plural copses)

1. A coppice: an area of woodland managed by coppicing (periodic cutting near stump level).

   Synonym: mott

2. Any thicket of small trees or shrubs, coppiced or not.

   Synonyms: thicket, bush, orchard

   • 1578, Rembert Dodoens (author) and Henry Lyte (translator), A niewe Herball or Historie of Plantes page 57:

     Agrimonie groweth in places not tylled, in rough stone mountaynes, in hedges and Copses, and by waysides.

   • 1798, William Wordsworth, Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, lines 9–15 (for syntax):

     The day is come when I again repose

     Here, under this dark sycamore, and view

     These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard tufts,

     Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,

     Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves

     ’Mid groves and copses.

   • 1919, Ronald Firbank, Valmouth, Duckworth (hardback edition), p19:

     Striking the highway beyond the little copse she skirted the dark iron palings enclosing Hare.

3. Any woodland or woodlot.

   Synonyms: stand, wood, woods

It is plausible that the broader senses of the word originated in listeners' and readers' misapprehension of the narrower sense, interpreting the word's meaning from context and coming away with only the idea of any dense young woodland or any woodland at all.

• coppice

copse (third-person singular simple present copses, present participle copsing, simple past and past participle copsed)

1. (transitive, horticulture) To trim or cut.
2. (transitive, horticulture) To plant and preserve.

• James A. H. Murray [et al.], editors (1884–1928), “Copse”, in A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Oxford English Dictionary), volume II (C), London: Clarendon Press, OCLC 15566697, page 977, column 1.

• -scope, OPSEC, Pecos, copes, scope, μ-scope, μscope