n.
- a plant cultivated on a large scale for food or other use, especially a cereal, fruit, or vegetable.
▸an amount of a crop harvested at one time.
- an amount of related people or things appearing at one time:
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the current crop of politicians.
- a hairstyle in which the hair is cut very short.
- a riding crop or hunting crop.
- a pouch in a bird's gullet where food is stored or prepared for digestion.
- the entire tanned hide of an animal.
v.
(crops, cropping, cropped)
- cut (something, especially a person's hair) very short.
▸(of an animal) bite off and eat the tops of (plants).
▸trim off the edges of (a photograph).
- harvest (a crop) from an area.
▸sow or plant (land) with plants that will produce a crop.
▸(of land or a plant) yield a harvest.
-
(crop up)
appear or occur unexpectedly.
-
(crop out)
(of rock) appear or be exposed at the surface of the earth.
History
The word crop has a complex history. In Old English it meant ‘pouch in a bird's gullet’ (modern sense 5) and ‘flower head, ear of corn’ (now obsolete); this latter sense gave rise to sense 1 and to other senses referring to the top of something, from which came its application to the upper part of a whip and so to its use to refer to short whips in hunting crop and riding crop. Crop shares a Germanic root with German, Dutch, and Scandinavian words signifying something protruding, swollen, or bunched together; it is also related to group, and to croup ‘rump or hindquarters of a horse’.
