copal
/ˈkoʊpəl/noun
copal is a noun meaning “A resinous exudation from various tropical trees, especially Hymenaea courbaril and Schinus terebinthifolia, used chiefly in making varnishes and…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled C-O-P-A-L, and it appears about once in every 17 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of copal is copals.
What does copal mean?
noun
- 1
A resinous exudation from various tropical trees, especially Hymenaea courbaril and Schinus terebinthifolia, used chiefly in making varnishes and printing ink.
- 2
Any of certain trees of the genus Bursera, commonly used in wood-carving.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce copal?
- US /ˈkoʊpəl/
- UK /ˈkəʊp(ə)l/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-copal.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of copal
- copals plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is copal?
Copal appears about once in every 17 million words in written English, the 125,655th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Copal in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense tree resin:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does copal come from?
From Spanish copal, from Classical Nahuatl copalli (“incense”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).