crop

Meanings

Noun

• A plant, especially a cereal, grown to be harvested as food, livestock fodder or fuel or for any other economic purpose.
• The natural production for a specific year, particularly of plants.
• A group, cluster or collection of things occurring at the same time.
• A group of vesicles at the same stage of development in a disease.
• The lashing end of a whip.
• An entire short whip, especially as used in horse-riding; a riding crop.
• A rocky outcrop.
• The act of cropping.
• A photograph or other image that has been reduced by removing the outer parts.
• A short haircut.
• A pouch-like part of the alimentary tract of some birds (and some other animals), used to store food before digestion or for regurgitation; a craw.
• The foliate part of a finial.
• The head of a flower, especially when picked; an ear of corn; the top branches of a tree.
• Tin ore prepared for smelting.
• An outcrop of a vein or seam at the surface.
• An entire oxhide.

Verb

• To remove the top end of something, especially a plant.
• To mow, reap or gather.
• To cut (especially hair or an animal's tail or ears) short.
• To remove the outer parts of a photograph or other image, typically in order to frame the subject better.
• To yield harvest.
• To cause to bear a crop.

Related

Similar words

• harvest, yield
• hunting crop, riding crop, whip, bat

Origin

• From Middle English crop, croppe, from Old English crop, cropp, croppa, from Proto-Germanic *kruppaz ("body, trunk, crop"), from Proto-Indo-European *grewb- ("to warp, bend, crawl"). 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"), Swedish kropp ("body, trunk"), Icelandic kroppur ("a hunch on the body"). Related to crap, 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.