Is it correct to say "copious amount of"? [closed]

Peter's comment intrigued me, since I feel much the same way. Compare the decline of copious...

...with the recent upswing for copious amounts...

There are a few other collocations that have remained relatively stable over the past century or more, but offhand I can only think of copious hair and copious notes. OED says of the plentiful, abundant sense...

Now chiefly used with nouns expressing production or supply, or in reference to quantity produced; with names of material substances, it is obs. or arch., but is used of literary materials.

I admit I'm not quite sure what they mean there, but I know I wouldn't say I drink copious tea, or that Britain is currently experiencing copious rain (both true - they just don't sound right to me).

See my comment (#4) to the question itself for a link showing the equally intriguing fact that singular a copious amount was once actually more common than the current favourite pluralised version. So we can't say that copious amounts is a "fixed phrase/frozen form", because historically it was never a front-runner anyway. I really don't know why it's so popular today.

Copious means abundant... when used with amount it shows emphasis on the abundance of the quantity implied... just like scarce amount would be an emphasis on the lack of amount implied... it helps to measure amount.