Copycat

adj, noun, verb, slang

adj, noun, verb, slang ·3 syllables ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    One who imitates or plagiarizes others' work. derogatory, informal

    "And in it all they are merely copy-cats—servile followers of the aristocratic creed, but without the genuine prestige of the old-time nobilities."

  2. 2
    someone who copies the words or behavior of another wordnet
  3. 3
    A criminal who imitates the crimes of another; specifically, a criminal who commits the same crime, especially a highly-publicized one, that has just or recently been committed by someone else.

    "a copycat strangler"

Verb
  1. 1
    To act as a copycat; to copy in a shameless or derivative way.

    "Because beasts don't talk with words, they talk with sounds, and I copycatted my language from beasts and birds[…]"

Adjective
  1. 1
    Imitative; unoriginal.

    "copycat crime"

Synonyms

All synonyms
apeapeaperconformistcopiercopyist

Example

More examples

"Layla committed a copycat killing."

Etymology

Originally American English, from copy + cat (“former derogatory term for a person”).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.