[Idiom] A word my teacher said

[non_e_giusto]

Short story: I'm Dutch, my teacher is Irish, the class was in English. Today the teacher used a word that I didn't know. It sounded a bit like "cobbom".

The phrase was something like: "this is just to see if you're /cobbom/". Meaning something like: not stupid, able to understand something. I asked him what it meant afterwards, and he repeated the word for me, but I still didn't catch it. Does anyone of you guys know that word?

 

[Grumpy]

He might have said "This is just to see if you're coping".
If you look it up in Wikipedia, it says In psychology, coping is "constantly changing cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage specific external and/or internal demands that are appraised as taxing" ...
However, in normal usage, it simply means that you are able to keep up with events: in your case, that you understand the lessons.

 

[non_e_giusto]

Thank you for your reply, but that's not it. I am familiar with that word. If it were that, I would have recognized it. The first syllable sounded more like "cop", not like "cope" (the "o" sounds differently).

 

[SlickVic9000]

(Not a Teacher)

A quick Google search has yielded "cop on", an Irish slang phrase meaning "to understand" or "have common sense". Based on the example sentences I've seen, I'd wager this is what you're looking for.

 

[non_e_giusto]

That must have been it! I already had some suspicions that it might be Irish slang. Now I know. Thank you sir.