Cop Copper Copping
Music gets stuck in my head, images keep popping up, and every once in a while a word does this, too. Recently, it's been a word and a related phrase: Cop, as in "That's a fair cop." Most Americans don't think of it that way. To most a "cop" is either a police officer (empirically shown by searching Google for images of "cop" - think about how Google ranks pages) or just another word in the phrase "cop a feel" (frequently used in episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for example).
The frequency with which the word pops into my head lately makes me wonder why it isn't showing up in my conversations. Thinking back over my day I'm sure I could have used it several times. But as I occasionally "dumb down" my vocabulary a tad when speaking with the people I assist in my job so as to make myself more clearly understood or so I don't sound like I'm trying to talk down to them (Really, I dislike the idea of making this judgment but experience tells me it can be necessary), I try to avoid words that might be unfamiliar despite the precision they could add or the simple joy or their use can bring. Cop might be just such a word. But I think it will keep sticking in my head until I use it a few times so I had better talk to people tomorrow.
