Just to complicate matters, I wouldn't have defined spinney as a small wood on a hill -- in fact, to me it's always had the overtones of something lower down in a valley, and secretive, and very small. I've just checked my Oxford Dictionary of English (a smaller version of the OED) and its definition is "Brit. a small area of trees and bushes" so no hill needed there, either. In Hampshire, a wood on the top of a hill is known as a hanger, and checking the ODE that says "Brit. a wood on the side of a steep hill".
Originally a copse was indeed a man-made small wood grown for cutting (copse is a contraction for coppice, the technique) but it's become more general since coppicing died out, I think. Thicket I'd say is more bushy and shrubby, and dense than a copse or wood.
I'd always thought tump was something smaller than a hill, but the ODE gives it as "chiefly dialect [often in place names] 1 a small rounded hill or mound; a tumulus. 2 a clump of trees, shrubs, or grass." So you could have a tump on a tump!! (No idea of its provenance -- perhaps a corruption of lump/clump?)
Originally a copse was indeed a man-made small wood grown for cutting (copse is a contraction for coppice, the technique) but it's become more general since coppicing died out, I think. Thicket I'd say is more bushy and shrubby, and dense than a copse or wood.
I'd always thought tump was something smaller than a hill, but the ODE gives it as "chiefly dialect [often in place names] 1 a small rounded hill or mound; a tumulus. 2 a clump of trees, shrubs, or grass." So you could have a tump on a tump!! (No idea of its provenance -- perhaps a corruption of lump/clump?)
