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A section for all you budding etymologists where each week the origin of a word or phrase is investigated.
called police officers many things, but mostly we just
This week it is..... Coppers (cops), Pigs, The Fuzz
called them “cops” and we never, ever, called them “the
Slang terms for police
Etymology is rarely an exact science. Words or phrases fuzz.” As a matter of fact, anybody calling the cops “the
spring up, become popular, and eventually may find their fuzz” would have been instantly suspected of being a
way into print. The process takes time, and it’s usually cop. It would have been a faux pas right up there with
difficult or impossible to track backwards to discover ironing your blue jeans.
There are several theories about the origin of “fuzz”:
where a particular word or phrase arose.
Let’s start with cop. Cop the noun is almost certainly One suggests that “fuzz” was derived from “fuss,”
a shortening of copper, which in turn derives from meaning that the cops were “fussy” over trifles. Another
cop the verb. The London police were called bobbies, is that it is a mispronunciation or mishearing of the
after Sir Robert Peel who advocated the creation of the warning “Feds!” (Federal agents). This seems unlikely.
Metropolitan Police Force in 1828. Copper as slang for Etymologist Eric Partridge wonders if “fuzz” might have
policeman is first found in print in 1846, according to the come from the beards of early police officers. This also
Oxford English Dictionary. The most likely explanation seems improbable.
is that it comes from the verb “to cop” meaning to seize, Evan Morris suggests the word “arose as a term of
capture, or snatch, dating from just over a century contempt for police based on the use of ‘fuzz’ or ‘fuzzy’
in other items of derogatory criminal slang of the period.
earlier (1704).
The derivation of the verb is unclear. Most authorities To be ‘fuzzy’ was to be unmanly, incompetent and soft.
trace it to the French caper and before that to the Latin How better to insult the police, after all, than to mock
capere, to seize, take. Other English words derived them as ineffectual?” That explanation seems as good as
from capere include capture. Thus, a copper is one who any, and better than most.
seizes. An alternative theory is that to cop comes from If you thought the term pig arose in the 1960s, you’re
in for a surprise. The OED cites an 1811 reference to
the Dutch kapen, meaning to take or to steal.
As with many words, there are several stories floating a “pig” as a Bow Street Runner--the early police force,
around positing various origins, almost certainly false. named after the location of their headquarters, before
The notion that cop is an acronym for “Constable On Sir Robert Peel and the Metropolitan Police Force (see
Patrol” is nonsense. Similarly, the word did not arise above.) Before that, the term “pig” had been used as
because police uniforms in New York (or London or early as the mid-1500s to refer to a person who is heartily
wherever) had copper buttons, copper badges, or disliked.
The usage was probably confined to the criminal classes
anything of the sort.
The origin of “fuzz” is uncertain. The expression arose until the 1960s, when it was taken up by protestors.
in America in the late 1920s and early 1930s, probably False explanations for the term involve the gas masks
in the criminal underworld. It never quite replaced cop. worn by the riot police in that era, or the pigs in charge
of George Orwell’s Animal Farm.
Evan Morris, The Word Detective, says:
Where in the world are you hearing people refer to the While police officers usually don’t mind being called
police as “fuzz”? . . . I have never heard a real person “cops,” they aren’t usually fond of the term “pig.” A
use it, unless you want to count Jack Webb on the old policeman’s lot is not an ‘appy one.
“Dragnet.” When I was growing up in the 1960s, we
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