Meaning
A person who deliberately imitates what someone else does, says, makes or wears rather than originating anything. As a modifier it describes imitation of a more serious kind, as in a copycat crime or copycat product, and as a schoolyard insult it accuses someone of unoriginality. Informal and derogatory, ranging from playground taunt to journalistic label for imitative crimes. Regional use: General English (originally American).
Origin
Print evidence dates from the mid-1880s: Etymonline records the noun by 1884 as American English and judges it 'probably at least a generation older' in speech. The earliest commonly cited quotation is from Constance Cary Harrison's 1887 Bar Harbor Days ('Our boys say you are a copy cat'), and Sarah Orne Jewett used it in 1890 and again in 1896, when a character remarks she had not heard the word in years, implying it was already old vernacular. A Slate investigation argues the cat element draws on the long use of cat as an insult (medieval hell-cat, Shakespeare's 'more and more a Cat') rather than on any feline talent for mimicry, so a copycat is a contemptible person who imitates, not someone who imitates in a cat-like way. The verb is recorded from 1932, and the criminological copycat crime from the early 1960s.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- copycat crime
- copycatted
- copycatting
Usage Examples
- Every time I paint my door a new colour, the copycat next door does the same.
- The airline blamed a copycat fare sale for the sudden price war.
- Do not be a copycat; come up with your own title for the essay.