Is Cop an acceptable euphemism for Police Officer?

[Wickerman]

Question has arisen if Cop is acceptable. What do you think?

[Jack_Dawson]

1. Better than "Pig" I suppose...

[CrispyQ]

21. My apologies, but I have to interject this . . .

Pigs are very nice creatures. They are very social & the two that I know have great personalities & are quite lovable.

Generally, I try to refrain from calling anyone derogatory names, but IMO, calling someone a pig is far from an insult! In fact, if you really don't like the person, it's an insult to the pig.

[Worst Username Ever]

2. The cops I used to work with called THEMSELVES cops, so I don't

see it as being a big deal. Who the heck thinks it is a big deal? How could the word "cop" be offensive?

[AIJ Alom]

3. Nothing wrong with cop.

COP, short for Caretaker Of the Peace.

[HEIL PRESIDENT GOD]

15. short for CRAPS ON PEOPLE.

[CO Liberal]

16. Or "Constable On Patrol"

According to www.acronymfinder.com.

[skippythwndrdog]

26. According to the O.E.D.

Cop is short for "Copper", a derogatory term, coined in England, now the U.K. Copper referred to the copper of which the badges of the 19th century Bobbies were made.

It has since morphed into an acceptable term, sometimes referred to (as noted elsewhere in theis thread) Constable On Patrol. That was a prime example of making a silk purse out of a sow's ear. (Couldn't resist at least one pig reference.)

Like any other term offense may be intended by the person using it, but it only becomes offensive when someone hearing it is thin-skinned enough to take offense at it. As my Momma always said, "Beore you get mad, consider the source." I would add that one should also consider whether it's actually worth getting mad. Usually it isn't.

[newscaster]

4. I am sure you have heard this before but....

"cop" is just short for the word COPPER that describes the buttons on the uniforms of early police officers. There are some police who consider the word COP a slur but other who have embraced the word and use it themselves. It certainly is better than some of the other words used to describe policemen.

[happyslug]

29. The "Politically Correct Version"

The problem with this version is early police officers did NOT use Copper buttons, instead used buttons of bone (Bone was cheaper than Copper). To understand this you have to go back to the period where Modern Police Forces began, the early 1800s.

Prior to the early 1800s in Common Law Countries you had Sheriffs (Who served papers for the County Courts) and Constables (Who served papers for Justices of the Peace) but no one who Patrolled or walked a beat. Towns had people who did a "patrol" but these came under the same rules as modern Security Guards not Police Officers. In fact Sheriffs and Constables were NOT salary personnel but paid on a per job basis. No payment, they did not serve the papers. This is still true in many states (Including my Home State of Pennsylvania).

Starting in the 1830s various states (For Urban Areas only, State police did not start till after 1900) and Cities started to adapt the French Concept of "Police" to Urban Areas. Thus modern Police forces only go back to the early 1800s and have a strong "Napoleonic" Military influence from the foundation of these Police Forces. Another characteristics of these early officers was the universal effort to keep their costs low, so such officers were expected to pay for their uniforms and any weapon they wanted to carry out of their own salary (Many early police decided to carry a billy club only for it was all their could afford). Thus most early police officers used buttons of Bone not Copper for Bone was cheaper.

It was this tendency to underpay police officers that was the real reason for the term "Coppers". You could hear an Early Police Officer coming to you by the jingling of the Copper Pennies in his pockets. Where did he get the Copper Pennies? The local Prostitutes, barkeepers (And other small time criminals and "near" criminals) who would put outside their doors a penny for the officer as a BRIBE to leave them alone.

I once told this History to a Police Officer who told me he had heard it before (and believe it to be the real reason for the term "Cop" and "Coppers) and than he told me he rather be called a "Pig" or the "Fuzz" or whatever but never a "Cop" for "Cop" implied he could be BOUGHT CHEAPLY (He joked he did not mind being bought, but being bought CHEAPLY was the ultimate insult).

Aside:
Now in this discussion of Police I am ignoring the Common Law "Sheriff Patrol". Under the Common Law the "Sheriff's Patrol" was a mandated obligation of every male in a County to perform, often one day a month. The person was NOT paid but had to perform this duty as a matter of law once a month (It was tied in with Militia duty and drill). With the Decline of the Militia after 1815 the Sheriffs patrol also declined.

The declined in the Militia (and the Militia's step child, the Sheriffs Patrol) was tied in with a policy of most states to lower the fine for non-compliance with Militia Duty so that more people would pay the fine rather than perform the duty (The states preferred the Cash from the Fine over the Militia Drilling). By the 1830s most states north of the Mason-Dixon Line had reduced the Fine for non-compliance with Militia Duty to Zero and converted the Fine to a head tax (Some people were STILL showing up for Militia Duty instead of paying the Fine).

With the decline of the Militia the Sheriff's Patrol also died (Outside of the American South where both institution survived as part of the Control Mechanism over the Slaves, in the North once the Indian Menace had been defeated in 1815 the Militia cease to have any real purpose to exist and slowly died after 1815, in the South the Militia was tied in with the Patrol and thus survived till the Civil War).

Thus the Modern Police Force came out of the Decline of the Militia and its replacement by a full-time paid police force.

[RubyDuby in GA]

5. How did they get the nickname "the fuzz"??

[happyslug]

30. Late 1960s and early 1970s

Most male Civilians had gone to wearing longer hair than the Crew Cuts of the 1950s. The police departments told their officers to maintain the same haircuts as was done in the US Army of the period (and still done by the US Army). Even the US Navy of the time period permitted longer hair than it did before and since.

Thus compared to civilians (even when wearing civilian clothing) you could tell police officer by his haircut. If you were out of the Military you quickly let your hair grown long (Even if you were on leave). On the other hand Police Officers HAD to keep their hair short do to Police Regulations, thus in the late 1960s and early 1970s it was rare to see anyone EXCEPT the police to have a crew cut. One word for a short cut is a "Fuzz cut" and the term "Fuzz" became a term for the police (through it still survives, it started to die in the 1980s as more and more men opted for a shorter haircut than they had in the 1970s).

One aside, prior to the late 1960s if you used the term "Long Hair Music" it meant classical music for the only MEN who wore long hair tended to be conductors of Large Orchestras. Home things change over time.

[RubyDuby in GA]

36. Thanks so much

Now I know, and knowing is half the battle.

[calico1]

6. Back during the 19th and early 20th century

they used to be called "coppers" because of the shiny copper buttons on their uniforms. It got shortened somewhere along the way to "cop." I don't think its derogatory like "pig" would be.

[markdd]

7. I'm an other, but..

Urban Legend stuff here:

Didn't police chiefs make Jack Webb change the intro to his 50's (not the 60's stuff with Harry Morgan) era Dragnet shows. It used to end with "I'm a cop", because that didn't think it was respectful enough?

[Kolesar]

8. Constable-On-Patrol sounds pretty dignified

better than pigs

[MnFats]

9. i know tons of cops who use 'cops' to describe themselves.

I talk to cops almost daily through my job.
Nothing wrong with 'cops.'

there was an old 'Dragnet' episode in which Joe Friday gave one of his little rants about how 'cop' is a demeaning term, disrespectful etc.
to which somebody replied,
'yeah, but he wasn't a REAL cop, was he?'

[Wickerman]

10. lots of origins, here is an interesting source/search

snip---

Around the year 1700, the slang verb cop entered English usage, meaning "to get ahold of, catch, capture." By 1844, cop showed up in print, and soon thereafter the -er suffix was added, and a policeman became a copper, one who cops or catches and arrests criminals. Copper first appeared in print in 1846, the use of cop as a short form copper occured in 1859.


http://ask.yahoo.com/ask/20000315.html

[slutticus]

13. Like ...."to cop a feel"...

[Wickerman]

14. well, now, with a user name like

oh, nevermind!

:)

[MrBenchley]

17. In the Western Channel's Hopalong Cassidy documentary

Hoppy asks his viewers not to refer to police officers as cops because it is disrespectful....(however, I'd never heard that anywhere else.)

Incidentally, it's an interesting documentary worth seeing...when William Boyd toured the South in the 1950s, he demanded that kids of all races be admitted equally or he wouldn't appear.

[Wickerman]

18. Boyd was cool

hadn't heard that story. thanks.

[MrBenchley]

22. It's worth catching if you haven't seen it....

When the studio didn't want to make the series any more, he bought the rights and turned out more films himself...and then television came along and he was sitting pretty....

[iverglas]

31. that one makes sense

"A fair cop", and all that -- which doesn't mean "a police officer who acts equitably", it means "caught fair and square". USAmericans have no collective memory of that meaning of the word "cop":

http://www.google.ca/search?q=cache:ENDIEiZq6pMJ:www.amasuperbike.com/2003-Oct/031005p.htm+%22a+fair+cop+means%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Race director Paul Butler said, "We want to give a message to the riders that these things (MotoGP bikes) are fast, heavy and dangerous. We've spoken to the rider and there was an element of 'it's a fair cop' to his reaction." (Reader-- Don't feel like the Lone Ranger, we have no idea what "it's a fair cop" means either. --Editor)

My Oxford Concise says "perhaps from obsolete cap 'arrest' via French caper 'seize' from Latin capere".

USAmericans may have been using the word in that sense back when police forces were first being organized in the US, but I suspect the origin of "copper" for police constable was Brit.

My great-great-grandfather (maternal grandfather's maternal grandfather) was a bobby in London in the mid-1800s. "Bobby" may or may not be derived from the name of Sir Robert Peel, the Brit Prime Minister who was responsible for organizing the first civil police force:

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-bob2.htm

That’s the usual explanation for the origin of bobby. It’s a familiar form of the first name of Mr (later Sir) Robert Peel, a British Tory politician of the early part of the nineteenth century who was Prime Minister in two administrations in the 1830s and 1840s. In 1828, while he was Home Secretary, he reorganised the old London police force (the Bow Street Runners) into a more efficient service. But to start with the officers of the new force were nicknamed peelers. That name had earlier been given to members of the Irish constabulary founded by Peel when he was Secretary for Ireland between 1812 and 1818 (he was so anti-Catholic that the locals nicknamed him Orange Peel). In London, for reasons we can only guess at, the name bobby eventually won the battle for survival over peeler.

<Obviously, civil police forces in England and Ireland pre-dated those in the US.>

It has been suggested that bobby was actually a transferred epithet. The Victorian writer John Hotten said in his Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words in 1867: “The official square-keeper, who is always armed with a cane to drive away idle and disorderly urchins, has, time out of mind, been called by said urchins Bobby the Beadle. Bobby is also an old English word for striking, or hitting, a quality not unknown to policemen”. ...

Anyhow, my sister's neighbour/friend is a member of the Ontario Provincial Police, and her five-year-old son apparently makes a habit of telling anyone who calls her a "cop" that they must not do so, but they may call her a "copper". Me, I'd tell the five-year-old to mind his own business and try being seen but not heard.

[LibLabUK]

32. Hmm...

"My Oxford Concise says "perhaps from obsolete cap 'arrest' via French caper 'seize' from Latin capere".

Hmm.. I think, and my Latin is quite rusty, "carpe" is "to seize" and "capere" is "to capture".

And if it's of any interest, I tend to call police "Coppers", "Rozzers" or "The Old Bill" and very occasionally "The Filth"... but I would never call them "Pigs" or refer to their vehicles as "Spam Cans".

[iverglas]

47. rusty latin

Mine too. My French is a lot more courant, and I'd never seen caper used in a sentence. My trusty Harrap's says

caper
1. Sport to cap (a football player, etc.)
2. to wrap (cigar)

Now, since the "football" in question is your football and my soccer, I'll have to get you to tell me what *that* means! or wait til I get home and ask the c.v. The French caper in this sense seems to be as obsolete as the English "cap". In fact, my big authoritative French dictionary (I forget which one it is, its cover being long gone when I retrieved it from a govt recycle bin years ago) doesn't even list the word.

I think, and my Latin is quite rusty, "carpe" is "to seize" and "capere" is "to capture".

Definitions that I find (via Google, my Latin dictionary having disappeared into a moving box and never been seen since) of capere tend to be things like "take, grab, seize", and of carpere things like "pluck, gather, seize". The latter sounds more like "seize hold of", while the former sounds more like "seize possession of". I dunno. "Capture", like "accept", does come from capere. I don't know whether anything comes from carpere. But aha, Oxford does:

carp <2>
find fault; complain pettily ... (... modern sense from or influenced by Latin carpere 'pluck at, slander')

Likewise "carpet", from carpere 'pluck, pull to pieces'. Huh. One wouldn't want cops doing that.

[LibLabUK]

48. To cap...

To recieve a cap or be capped in either football (soccer), Rugby or cricket is to play for one of the national teams (England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland) against another nation.

Football and Cricket players actually recieve a cap (complete with tassle), I'm not sure if Rugby players do or not.

A player's experience or seniority on the team is often described in caps... eg So-and-So Moneybags has 60 caps.

I'm not sure if this is peculiar to the British football, or whether it's something that other countries do too.. I'm pretty sure the other cricketing countries cap their players.

[Dogmudgeon]

11. What "Cop" means

Actually, it's a middle English slang term meaning "to catch, grasp, or seize." Kind of like the French word arrêter, from which we got the word arrest.

Check out Mencken's The American Language.

--bkl

[Wickerman]

12. hey BKL

great minds and all!

How ya been?

:hi:

[anonymous44]

19. definitely

better than being called a pig

[slackmaster]

20. Transitive verb, something you do to an attitude

Or a feel.

:D

[Jack_DeLeon]

23. they dont call that shows "COPS" for nothing....

duh ofcourse there is nothing wrong with calling the police cops...

I'm sure there are plenty of people who have more demeaning names for them also.

[MrSandman]

24. I prefer either Deputy, Trooper...

CO, Officer, etc. depending on the Department.

OTOH, I have been known to refer to A Conservation Offficer as a "Possum Sheriff." He was singularly unamused.

[skippythwndrdog]

27. Of all the LEOs I know

Conservation Officers (aka Game Wardens) usually are the most humor challenged. I don't know why it is: it just is.

[MrSandman]

28. Too true...

But most do love to bust other LEOs.

Last year they got a (1)Summers Co. DS for Spotlighting a 10 point,(2) on duty, (3)out of a marked cruiser, (4)with has service weapon.

Grand slam.

[TX-RAT]

42. "Possum Sheriff." ?

Lucky you didn't get pepper sprayed.
I pissed off our local GW, weekend before last. I had a group of dove hunters in a sunflower patch. I seen the GW checking my hunters shotguns, to see if they were plugged. He seen me about 200 yards out in the field. He yelled out, "how many shells you got in that gun", i yelled back, "all i can get". You have to understand, he weighs about 240lbs and is about 5-4. He looked like a turkey waddling across that field. When he asked to check my gun, i handed him my over and under Winchester. He stomped back to the truck mumbling under his breath.

[Trashman]

25. My best friend is a Cop

I call LEO's by this name most of the time. I also asked him if he found this name offensive. He told me it doesn't bother him or anyone else he works with.

[TX-RAT]

33. I'll bite,

Myself, i prefer Peace Officer, if your not going to call them by their proper name.
As I've said before, I've never meet a Cop. I've met
Deputy's
Police officers
Constables
Troopers
Rangers
Agents
Marshals
Game wardens
One thing they all have in common. They are all recognized by the state of TX as Peace Officers.

[LibLabUK]

34. Hmm..

You have "constables" over there?

What's the difference between a trooper, a police officer and a constable?

Also, by Ranger are you referring to the Texas Rangers, and if so, what do they actually do?

[TX-RAT]

35. Constables, work for the Justice of the Peace

Most are volunteers and unpaid.
Troopers work for the Texas Department of Public Safety, enforcing state highway laws.
Police Officers work for the City's
Deputy's work for the county.
Rangers also work for the Texas Department of Public safety, enforcing state law, and assisting other agency's. They also investigate other agency's.

[skippythwndrdog]

37. Constables in Kentucky have the same powers as the sheriff EXCEPT

for collecting taxes. It's also an unpaid gig.

[TX-RAT]

39. They also don't answer to the Sheriff

They answer to the County Commissioners. This never created a problem in our county, but it has in others. Rouge Constables.

[skippythwndrdog]

41. The sheriff can direct constables here, but it is rarely done.

The County Judge Executive usually handles Constabluary issues. (Judge Exec. roughly translates to mayor of the county's unincorporated areas, but all county residents vote for the office. He presides over the Fiscal Court if the county is on the Magistrate system or over the Commissioners if the county uses commissioner style government. The main difference is that Magistrates are elected by specific districts while commissioners are elected at large within the county. Weird, huh?)

[Wickerman]

38. Thanks TR

appreciate the benefit of your experience.

[Name removed]

40. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[slackmaster]

43. Minor quibble with the question

The term "cop" is a dysphemism, not a euphemism.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysphemism

The policy I strive to follow is to always use the formal or proper name for everything. I often fail, but that is my ideal. If applied consistently, it can avoid misunderstandings and bad feelings of all kinds.

[TX-RAT]

46. You gotta love their examples.

Shit on a shingle?
We used to eat a ton of that. I always thought it tasted a little funny, must have been all that Dysphemism. Cooks told us it was saltpeter.

[gatlingforme]

44. Cop is acceptable. Freedom of speech trumps emotions.

[iverglas]

45. and sense trumps nonsense

"Cop is acceptable. Freedom of speech trumps emotions."

The poll question wasn't asking whether it is or should be illegal to call someone a "cop".

Freedom of speech would have been an issue, had that been the question. That was not the question, so freedom of speech is not an issue.

When my sister's neighbour's five-year-old son tells people not to call his mother a cop, he is not interfering, or attempting to interfere, with their exercise of freedom of speech. Five-year-olds don't have that authority. He is lecturing them on manners.

We are all, of course, entitled to lecture people on manners. That's what freedom of speech is all about, eh?

So it is entirely acceptable to say "cop is unacceptable". It's an expression of opinion.

Likewise, "cop is acceptable" is just an opinion. And "freedom of speech trumps emotions" is just a red herring, when offered in support of that opinion. And a straw-person argument, if offered to imply that someone had argued that it should be illegal to call someone a "cop".

The question is not whether "cop" is or should be a legal word. It is whether it is a nice word. It is therefore entirely a matter of personal choice whether to say "yes", or "no", or "I don't know", or "I don't care", just as it is to say or not say "cop".

However, people who actually want to engage in discussion, and perhaps even to persuade others to their point of view, might be expected to offer argument in support of their opinion. "Freedom of speech trumps emotions" is not such an argument.