In his AWAD email today, Anu mentioned acronyms that are coined after the fact. At some point in the past, I heard that ‘cop’ was originally an acronym for ‘Constable On Patrol’. I didn’t find anything in Onelook’s offerings to suggest that this was in fact the case. M-W indicated that it was a backformation of ‘copper.’ Does anyone have any information on this? Was it originally an acronym, or was the acronym formed after the fact?

There has been much discussion of this. IIRC, the basic rule is to be very leery of any alleged acronym etymology prior to the 20th Century. Snopes examines a few alleged acronyms, although not "cop", at http://www.snopes.com/language/acronyms/acronyms.htm

FWIW, here's Quinion's take on "cop"
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-cop2.htm

When I was a schoolboy we used to say "Here, cop hold of this!" if we were passing something to another boy (it was a sexist age). So the use of 'cop' as meaning to grab or seize was certainly around then.

Quinion also mentions 'Posh', which has come up for discussion here before, and is often thought to be an acronym for 'port out starboard home' and to reflect the cooler and therefore more expensive, posh, cabins on ships sailing from the UK to India. To me, given that the cooler cabins are on the north side of the ship, posh used to be a wonderful way of remembering which side of a vessel is port and which starboard.

I'm assuming that the ships in question must have transited the Suez Canal. If they were to take the long way around Africa for most of the trip the north side would be the warm side.

must have transited the Suez Canal

That's right. The canal opened in 1869 to provide a shorter trade route to India.

The evidence unfortunately does not support this pretty idea as being the origin of 'posh'! Quinion suggests a few other possibilities but none of them are very convincing nor, unfortunately, are they as elegant as the port / starboard one.

"What's a dirty penny made of?"

This was a witticism current in my father's day [used in the presence of a policeman on the prowl].

[Please excuse the dangling preposition. "A dirty penny is made of what?" is not how they phrased things in those pedagogically disadvantaged days. ]

In the British movies and TV fare I’ve seen, I’ve also heard people who were being apprehended by the police say, “It’s a fair cop!”

“It’s a fair cop!”

Any bad guy who said this to a cop when he was collared was probably ready to cop a plea.

BTW "collar" seems to be a bit of a misnomer. Few of the bad guys I see on the 6 o'clock news are wearing collars. In fact, most of them are wearing 5 o'clock shadows.

This reminds me of another 'cops and robbers' standard "beat the rap" -- which presumably derives from "rap sheet".

In Houston, the cops used to say: "You can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride."

I did some research on this awhile ago and after an hour or so all I knew was that nobody agrees on whether or not it's an acronym.
My Grandfather used to call pennies "coppers" hich made sense to me since pennies were made of copper (in those days!) When I visited England in the 1970s I saw the British penny which was quite large and copper!
The word copper was interchangeable with policeman, too.
Go figure.

>all I knew was that nobody agrees on whether or not it's an acronym.

Yet, I think the extreme scarcity of verifiable acronym origins for words of that era should be enough to mean that the likelihood is vanishingly small. Are there ANY words of similar vintage that can be established to have originated from acronyms? The whole acronym origin thing seems to be a case of projecting 20th Century fashion on to the past.

On its page about the alleged acronymic origin of fuck, snopes had this to say:

In reply to:

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Though
a few common English words have grown out of acronyms (words created by taking the first letter(s) of major words in a phrase), 'fuck' isn't one of them. With precious few exceptions, words of acronymic origin date from the 20th century and no earlier. It's almost guaranteed, therefore, any word from before the time of automobiles did not spring to life from a series of initials becoming so common folks began pronouncing it as its own word.
...
Acronymic explanations catch our fancy due to the "hidden knowledge" factor. Most of us feel a bit of a glow when we think we're in possession of information others aren't privy to, and when a titillating or apt story is thrown in behind the trivia, these things just take off. "Tips" does not come from "To insure prompt service," yet that canard is widely believed. Likewise, "golf" didn't spring to life out of "Gentlemen only; ladies forbidden," and "posh" did not take its place in our vocabulary from a shortening of "Port out; starboard home."

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If anybody knows of a good site that explores this issue well, I would add it to my list of links.

Over the years I've seen the word used in various ways:

A "cop" on a beat.
"Cop a feel" on a date with your girlfriend.
"Cop a squat" to sit down often on the ground.
"Cop a plea" attempt to be charged with a lesser crime.
"Cop to it" to admit to something.

I don't actually recall using the word in any sense other than the first.

k