coppice

American  

[kop-is] / ˈkɒp ɪs /

noun

1. copse.

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coppice British  

/ ˈkɒpɪs /

noun

1. a thicket or dense growth of small trees or bushes, esp one regularly trimmed back to stumps so that a continual supply of small poles and firewood is obtained

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verb

1. (tr) to trim back (trees or bushes) to form a coppice

2. (intr) to form a coppice

Other Word Forms

• coppiced adjective
• coppicing noun

Etymology

Origin of coppice

1375–1425; late Middle English copies < Middle French copeis, Old French copeiz < Vulgar Latin *colpātīcium cutover area, equivalent to *colpāt ( us ) past participle of *colpāre to cut ( coup ¹ ) + -īcium -ice

Example Sentences

"You may see the stereotypical pencil point trees that they've started to fell or to coppice," Jasper said.

From BBC • Mar. 14, 2026

"For this reason, hazel was often very common in historical coppice woodlands."

From Science Daily • Nov. 14, 2023

“They are molting now, buried in the mud out there,” Douglas said, gesturing toward the marshy coppice that crowds both sides of the two-lane Queen’s Highway, the major north-south road on Andros.

From Washington Post • Oct. 14, 2015

I leant upon a coppice gate     When Frost was spectre-gray, And Winter's dregs made desolate     The weakening eye of day.

From Slate • Jan. 1, 2013

When they had thus painfully travelled through the greater part of the coppice, the bloodhound's deep bay came nearer, and nearer, less and less musical, louder, and sterner.

From The Cloister and the Hearth A Tale of the Middle Ages by Reade, Charles