kopje

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a small, usually rocky hill or mound, especially on the South African veld

   The patrol climbed the rocky kopje to survey the open veld below.

2. 2
   noun

   figurative: a mound or cloud mass resembling a small isolated hill

   Dark kopjes of smoke gathered above the distant horizon.

Borrowed from South African Dutch kopje, a diminutive of kop, 'head'; Afrikaans uses koppie. The word became familiar in British English through nineteenth-century writing about southern Africa and the South African wars.

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