Copy paste content for so

Hi, I know that google will penalize my website if I did copy paste articles to my website but I want to know what will happen exactly. What penalize means?

I have a competitor website which was made in wordpress I would like to clone it completely. If I clone it do i get traffic for my website? Or the traffic will be completely zero? If I get atleast some traffic yup I am very happy if my competitor website seo goes down yup I am happy LOL