copycat

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   One who imitates or plagiarizes the work of others.

   • 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.
   • I wanted to make them brilliant. I wanted to make them interesting. And of course I could not do it by myself. I am nothing but a copycat. I just quoted a lot of things I had heard you say; and I did worse than that, Peter.
2. 2

   A criminal who imitates the crimes of another

   A criminal who imitates the crimes of another; specifically, a criminal who commits the same crime, especially a highly-publicized one, that has recently been committed by someone else.

   • a copycat strangler
3. 3

   Imitative

   Imitative; unoriginal.

   • copycat crime
   • “Because of my size, I was a natural leader in junior high school. Gangs are the most copycat of subcultures. It used to be zoot suits; now it's tattoos. When I was thirteen, I got a tattoo.”
   • As one executive put it: Now in the beverage market we are to a great extent very copycat.
4. ›+ 1 more definitionshow fewer

   1. 4

      To act as a copycat

      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[…]
      • In a genre that is rife with copycatting, Ms. Cain deserves some credit for having gotten a potentially interesting new series off the ground.

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