copious [LME] Copious is from Latin copia ‘plenty’, also found in the symbol of fruitfulness the cornucopia [L16th] or ‘*horn of plenty’, and in copy [LME]. The radical change of meaning from the Latin came about because copia had a secondary meaning of ‘permission, licence, opportunity’. Latin phrases such as copiam describendi facere ‘permission to make a transcription’ led to copia being used in medieval Latin to mean a copy.