Definitions

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

  • noun A small enclosed field or pasture near a house.
  • noun A small farm, especially a tenant farm.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To bleach (linen) after bucking or soaking in an alkaline dye, by exposing to the sun and air.
  • noun A small piece of inclosed ground used for pasture, tillage, or other purposes; any small tract of land; a very small farm: applied especially to the small farms on the western coast and islands of Scotland.

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

  • noun A small, inclosed field, adjoining a house; a small farm.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A fenced piece of land, especially in Scotland, usually small and arable and used for small-scale food production and usually with a crofter's dwelling thereon.
  • noun archaic A carafe.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a small farm worked by a crofter

Etymologies

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

[Middle English, from Old English.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old English

Support

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

Examples

  • Turner a freehold tenement in Greenhill Street, with garden and croft, which is not mentioned in any of his later transactions, and from Edward

    Shakespeare's Family 1885

  • The longest time he spent away from the croft was the six years he spent serving his country in the last war.

    unknown title 2009

  • The longest time he spent away from the croft was the six years he spent serving his country in the last war.

    unknown title 2009

  • There was a kind of croft on one hillside, and from a hut the smoke of breakfast was beginning to curl.

    Greenmantle 2005

  • My bet is you were connected to a call handling centre somewhere miles away, spoke to someone who had to ask what a croft was and weren’t visited because it was too far away from the nearest ‘big’ town and they couldn’t lose the manpower for half a day to reach you.

    The Revolving Door System. « POLICE INSPECTOR BLOG Inspector Gadget 2009

  • There was a kind of croft on one hillside, and from a hut the smoke of breakfast was beginning to curl.

    Greenmantle John Buchan 1907

  • "croft" i.e. a very small holding of land, where he raised sheep and grew potatoes.

    gapingvoid: "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards" 2008

  • Our house and its three fields used to be a croft, supporting a numerous family.

    Jean's Knitting Jean 2009

  • I heard the door of our croft scrape shut across the summer warmed flagstones, then one of the men offer my mother a ride on his mount.

    The premature ending of Annie MacLeod Gill Hoffs 2011

  • Foonf (UID#) on November 12th, 2009 at 2: 00 pm ps3 laura croft cameltoe ftw.

    tomb raider through the ages | My[confined]Space 2009

Comments

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

  • This word was used in "The Three Lives Of Thomasina" movie.

    August 28, 2012