kopile

Serbo-Croatian

Uncertain. Possibly from Proto-Slavic *kopylъ (“shoot, sprout; bastard”), from *kopàti (“to dig, cultivate”); compare Ukrainian копил (kopyl) or копиля (kopylja), Bulgarian ко́пеле (kópele). Alternatively an old paleo-Balkan substrate word; compare Romanian copil, Aromanian cochil, Albanian kopil, Byzantine Greek κόπελος (kópelos). First attested in the 17th century.^[1]

kȍpile n (Cyrillic spelling ко̏пиле)

^ Matasović, Ranko (2016) “kopile”, in Dunja Brozović Rončević, Dubravka Ivšić Majić, Tijmen Pronk, editors, Etimološki rječnik hrvatskoga jezika [Etymological dictionary of the Croatian language] (in Serbo-Croatian), volumes I: A—Nj, Zagreb: Institut za hrvatski jezik i jezikoslovlje, page 478