copse

/kɑps/

Other forms: copses

A copse is a thicket of bushes or a small stand of trees. A copse of trees can provide a good hiding place during a game of hide-and-seek.

If you go to your local garden shop and ask about how to take care of your copse, you may get some blank stares, as it's not a word you'll find much in everyday use. The word first appeared in the late 16th century, as a shortened form of coppice, a word still used in British English, referring to an area with trees or shrubs that are periodically cut back to the ground so that they grow back thicker.

Definitions of copse

1. noun

   a dense growth of trees, shrubs, or bushes
   synonyms: brush, brushwood, coppice, thicket

   types:

   brake

   an area thickly overgrown usually with one kind of plant

   canebrake

   a dense growth of cane (especially giant cane)

   spinney

   a copse that shelters game

   underbrush, undergrowth, underwood

   the brush (small trees and bushes and ferns etc.) growing beneath taller trees in a wood or forest

   ground cover, groundcover

   small plants other than saplings growing on a forest floor

   type of:

   botany, flora, vegetation

   all the plant life in a particular region or period