Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Cultivated plants or agricultural produce, such as grain, vegetables, or fruit, considered as a group.
  • noun The total yield of such produce in a particular season or place.
  • noun A group, quantity, or supply appearing at one time.
  • noun A short haircut.
  • noun An earmark on an animal.
  • noun A short whip used in horseback riding, with a loop serving as a lash.
  • noun The stock of a whip.
  • noun A pouchlike enlargement of a bird's gullet in which food is partially digested or stored for regurgitation to nestlings.
  • noun A similar enlargement in the digestive tract of annelids and insects.
  • intransitive verb To cut or bite off the tops or ends of.
  • intransitive verb To cut (hair, for example) very short.
  • intransitive verb To clip (an animal's ears, for example).
  • intransitive verb To trim (a photograph or picture, for example).
  • intransitive verb To harvest.
  • intransitive verb To cause to grow or yield a crop.
  • intransitive verb To feed on growing grasses and herbage.
  • intransitive verb To plant, grow, or yield a crop.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To shear; cut the nap from, as woolen cloth.
  • To cut down needlessly the outer margins of a book. When this cutting shaves the type the book so treated is said to be bled.
  • To take off the top or head of (a plant); cut off the ends of; eat off; pull off; pluck; mow; reap: as, to crop flowers, trees, or grass; to crop fruit from the tree.
  • To cut off a part of (the ear of an animal) as a mark of identification, or for other reasons.
  • To cause to bear a crop; plant or fill with crops; raise crops on: as, to crop a field.
  • To sprout; appear in part, and apparently by accident or undesignedly, from beneath the surface or otherwise from concealment; become partly visible or obvious: with out, sometimes up or forth.
  • To appear incidentally and undesignedly; come to light or to the surface: as, his peculiarities crop out in his work; the truth cropped out in spite of him.
  • To yield harvest.
  • noun In cattle, a portion of the back, on either side of the median line, immediately back of the shoulder. See cut under point
  • noun The working unit in the making of turpentine, consisting of a forest tract of from 200 to 250 acres, containing approximately 10,500 faces.
  • noun In certain cephalopods and other mollusks, a more or less dilated portion of the esophagus, sometimes forming a lobular cæcum.
  • noun In the United States, usually a crop of which the herbage is eaten either green or dry, not exclusive of pasturage; the meaning is not well defined with reference to roots, which (until recently the sugar-beet) have been little grown in the United States. (See the extract.) T. Shaw (“Forage Crops,” p. 1) restricts the term to pasture crops other than grasses.
  • noun The top or highest part of anything, especially of an herb or a tree.
  • noun Corn and other cultivated plants grown and garnered; the produce of the ground; harvest: as, the crops are 10 per cent. larger than last year; in a more restricted sense, that which is cut, gathered, or garnered from a single field, or of a particular kind of grain or fruit, or in a single season: as, the wheat-crop; the potato-crop.
  • noun Corn and other cultivated plants while growing: as, a standing crop; the crop in the ground; the crops are all backward this year.
  • noun The first stomach of a fowl; the craw; the ingluvies: sometimes used humorously of the human maw or stomach.
  • noun In insects, an anterior dilatation of the alimentary canal, succeeded by the proventriculus. See cut under Blattidæ.
  • noun Anything gathered when ready or in season: as, the ice-crop.
  • noun The act of cutting or clipping off, as hair: as, he has given you a pretty close crop.
  • noun An ear-mark.
  • noun The hair of the head when thick and short, forming a sort of cap.
  • noun A wig of rough, short hair.
  • noun In mining, the outcrop of a lode. See outcrop.
  • noun In tanning, an entire untrimmed hide, struck for sole-leather. Also called crop-hide.
  • noun A fixed weight in different localities for sugar, tobacco, and other staples. A crop hogshead of tobacco is from 1,000 to 1,300 pounds net.
  • noun A kind of whip used by horsemen in the hunting-field, consisting of a short, stout, and straight staff having a crooked handle, and a loop of leather at the end.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To cut off the tops or tips of; to bite or pull off; to browse; to pluck; to mow; to reap.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English cropp, ear of grain.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Old English cropp ("head or top of a sprout or herb").

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word crop.

Examples

  • The poppies with which this Isis was crowned, signified the joy men received at their first abundant crop, the word which signifies a _double crop_, being also a name for the _poppy_.

    Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology For Classical Schools (2nd ed) Charles K. Dillaway

  • But these men, who have been paid up in full for last year's crop, and have seen that their crop, slim as it was, brought them a fair compensation, are bound to show _a crop_ this year.

    Letters from Port Royal Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) Elizabeth Ware [Editor] Pearson

  • In our country the crop that is most valuable and that occupies the greatest land area is generally known as the _grass crop_.

    Agriculture for Beginners Revised Edition Frank Lincoln Stevens 1902

  • The answer to that question had not been arrived at when they dropped asleep, lulled by the sound of rippling water and the _crop, crop, crop_ made by the grazing ponies, and this time their weariness was so great that sleep overcame them both.

    A Dash from Diamond City George Manville Fenn 1870

  • For the _crop, crop, crop_ of the browsing animals had begun again from close at hand, and the comrades stood listening for some little time while the otherwise unbroken stillness once more reigned.

    A Dash from Diamond City George Manville Fenn 1870

  • After a time he stopped short, and from the steady _crop, crop, crop_, I knew he was amongst grass; and he grazed away long enough before moving on again at his old amble.

    Charge! A Story of Briton and Boer George Manville Fenn 1870

  • And so it was here; for as Bart sat munching there in the delicious restfulness of his position, with the soft warm breeze just playing through the leaves, the golden sunshine raining down amongst the leaves and branches in dazzling streams, while the pleasant whirr and hum of insects was mingled with the gentle _crop, crop, crop_ of Black Boy's teeth as he feasted on the succulent growth around, all tended to produce drowsiness, and in a short time he found himself nodding.

    The Silver Canyon A Tale of the Western Plains George Manville Fenn 1870

  • Despite this decades-old advice from It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, this year's local pumpkin crop is worth talking about.

    Local pumpkins survive summer heat, fall rains Ann Posegate 2010

  • Murray informs us that up to half of the yearly raisin crop is confiscated by the government, in order to insure scarcity and higher prices.

    Archive 2007-07-01 2007

  • _Dibong_ Mishmees, who are always known by the term crop-haired.

    Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and the Neighbouring Countries William Griffith

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • Where that thicket stands there was crop ground, maybe as late as my own time. Wendell Berry "A Native Hill"

    July 19, 2008