crop
UK /kɹɒp/ · US /kɹɑp/ noun, verb
Forms crops cropping cropped
- noun (agriculture) A plant, grown for it, or its fruits or seeds, to be harvested as food, livestock fodder, or fuel or for any other economic purpose. “The farmer had to decide which crop to grow as his main bet for the coming year. Would it be barley, oats, or something else?”
- noun The production amount of such an output for a specific season or year, particularly of plants. “It was a good crop of oats this year. What a nice change after last year's crop!”
- noun (figurative) A group, cluster, or collection of things occurring at the same time. “The decade produced a whole crop of ideas about space travel.”
- noun A group of vesicles at the same stage of development in a disease. “The patient had a crop of bumps indicative of chicken pox.”
- noun The lashing end of a whip.
- noun An entire short whip, especially as used in horse-riding.
- noun A rocky outcrop.
- noun The act of cropping.
- verb (transitive) To remove the top end of something, especially a plant.
- verb (transitive) To mow, reap or gather.
- verb (transitive) To cut (especially hair or an animal's tail or ears) short.
- verb (transitive) To remove the outer parts of a photograph or other image, typically in order to frame the subject better.
- verb (intransitive) To yield harvest.
- verb (transitive) To cause to bear a crop.
- verb (transitive) To beat with a crop, or riding-whip.
Synonyms
harvest yield hunting crop riding crop whip bat craw cultivate work graze pasture browse range snip clip trim lop dress prune cut back
Etymology
From Middle English crop, croppe, from Old English cropp, croppa (“the head or top of a plant, a sprout or herb, a bunch or cluster of flowers, an ear of corn, the craw of a bird, a kidney”), from Proto-West Germanic *kropp, from Proto-Germanic *kruppaz (“body, trunk, crop”), from Proto-Indo-European *grewb- (“to warp, bend, crawl”). Doublet of group.
Cognate with Dutch krop (“crop”), German Low German Kropp (“a swelling on the neck, the craw, maw”), German Kropf (“the craw, ear of grain, head of lettuce or cabbage”), Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish kropp (“body, trunk”), Faroese and Icelandic kroppur (“body”). Related to crap. Doublet of group and croup.
From Middle English croppen (“to cut, pluck and eat”), from Old English *croppian. Cognate with Scots crap (“to crop”), Dutch kroppen (“to cram, digest”), Low German kröppen (“to cut, crop, stuff the craw”), German kröpfen (“to crop”), Icelandic kroppa (“to cut, crop, pick”). Literally, to take off the crop (top, head, ear) of a plant. See Etymology 1.
Webster’s 1913
- noun The pouchlike enlargement of the gullet of birds, serving as a receptacle for food; the craw.
- noun The top, end, or highest part of anything, especially of a plant or tree. [Obs.] "Crop and root." Chaucer.
- verb To cut off the tops or tips of; to bite or pull off; to browse; to pluck; to mow; to reap.
- verb Fig.: To cut off, as if in harvest.
Etymology [OE. crop, croppe, craw, top of a plant, harvest, AS. crop, cropp, craw, top, bunch, ear of corn; akin to D. krop craw, G. kropf, Icel. kroppr hump or bunch on the body, body; but cf. also W. cropa, croppa, crop or craw of a bird, Ir. & Gael. sgroban. Cf. Croup, Crupper, Croup.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “crop”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details