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Glite Dictionary
kotong cop

kotong cop

9.9
A police officer who asks for or takes bribes
  • noun
  • Offensive
translation icon : [ofensivo] policía extorsionador
  • She refused to pay the kotong cop and reported the incident to the authorities.

Examples

  • Rumors spread quickly about the new officer being a kotong cop who demanded weekly payments from drivers.

  • The city has launched a campaign to crack down on every kotong cop operating at checkpoints.

  • The kotong cop accepted a bribe from the businessman.

  • Many citizens fear the kotong cops in their neighborhood.

  • Rumors spread quickly about the new officer being a kotong cop who demanded weekly payments from drivers.

  • She refused to pay the kotong cop and reported the incident to the authorities.

  • The city has launched a campaign to crack down on every kotong cop operating at checkpoints.

Surface Forms

kotong cop singular
kotong cops plural

Morphology

kotong + cop

The crucial constituent 'kotong' is not an English lexical item (it's culture-specific slang for extortion/bribe) and is marked as unknown in the provided data, so a B1 learner who only knows the English word 'cop' could not derive the meaning. The phrase therefore behaves like a language-specific idiom whose overall meaning ('a corrupt police officer who solicits bribes') is not transparently predictable from English constituents.

Etymology

Kotong cop may come from the Filipino word kotong, which means a sudden stop or surprise. One popular story says corrupt police would suddenly stop cars and quietly demand money, so kotong cop came to mean 'a police officer who takes bribes'.