crop

noun

\ ˈkräp

Definition of crop

(Entry 1 of 2)

1 : a pouched enlargement of the esophagus of many birds that serves as a receptacle for food and for its preliminary maceration also : an enlargement of the digestive tract of another animal (such as an insect)

2a(1) : a plant or animal or plant or animal product that can be grown and harvested extensively for profit or subsistence an apple crop a crop of wool

(2) : the total yearly production from a specified area

b : the product or yield of something formed together the ice crop

c : a batch or lot of something produced during a particular cycle the current crop of films

d : collection a crop of lies

3 : the stock or handle of a whip also : a riding whip with a short straight stock and a loop

4a : the part of the chine of a quadruped (such as a domestic cow) lying immediately behind the withers —usually used in plural — see cow illustration

b : an earmark on an animal especially : one made by a straight cut squarely removing the upper part of the ear

c : a close cut of the hair He has a thick crop of hair.

crop

verb

cropped; cropping

Definition of crop (Entry 2 of 2)

transitive verb

1a : to remove the upper or outer parts of crop a hedge crop a dog's ears

b : harvest crop trout

c : to cut off short : trim crop a photograph

2 : to cause (land) to bear a crop planned to crop another 40 acres also : to grow as a crop

intransitive verb

1 : to feed by cropping something

2 : to yield or make a crop

3 : to appear unexpectedly or casually Problems crop up daily.

Synonyms More Example Sentences Phrases Containing crop Learn More About crop

Synonyms for crop

Synonyms: Noun

harvest

Synonyms: Verb

Examples of crop in a Sentence

Noun Tobacco is their main crop. They sprayed the crops with a pesticide. The teachers got ready for a new crop of students. a new crop of horror movies Verb The picture was cropped badly. We had to crop the image to fit it into the frame. Her hair was cropped short. See More

Recent Examples on the Web: Noun The next generation of the plant hopper and crop-destroying pest has hatched in the 11 states across the northeastern U.S. after their dormant winter. — Mike Snider And Scott Fallon, USA TODAY, 18 June 2022 As a result, business has boomed, with marijuana surpassing potatoes and blueberries as Maine’s most valuable crop. — Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 18 June 2022 The statement also said unauthorized well water use for commercial crop irrigation was observed and is subject to civil and criminal penalties. — Fox News, 17 June 2022 Sarah Taber, a crop scientist, pointed out this difference in a Twitter thread that went viral. — Thin Lei Win, Fortune, 17 June 2022 Turkey’s Defense Ministry said Turkey, Russia and Ukraine have appointed high-ranking military officers and set up a telephone hotline to try and overcome hurdles over crop exports. — John Leicester And Yuras Karmanau, Chicago Tribune, 15 June 2022 Common crop sensor sizes are APS-C and micro four thirds (1.6x and 1.5x). — Lauren Breedlove, Travel + Leisure, 14 June 2022 That crisis, which followed spikes in wheat, corn and other major agricultural commodities, had not been caused by a rice crop failure or even a shortage of the grain. — New York Times, 10 June 2022 The needs of the community change over time, and new types of businesses and housing crop up while others are replaced. — Phillip Molnar, San Diego Union-Tribune, 10 June 2022 Recent Examples on the Web: Verb Though drum kit and feedback whines crop up on occasion, the piece is squarely in the contemporary classical tradition. — Hannah Edgar, Chicago Tribune, 24 May 2022 Throughout the years, the aviation company has seen a number of issues crop up with the Starliner spacecraft. — Joshua Hawkins, BGR, 18 May 2022 Flashbacks throughout the decades crop up between characters in unconvincing old age makeup addressing the camera, documentary style, with sweeping decrees about the true nature of Angelyne, fame, and everything in between. — Caroline Framke, Variety, 18 May 2022 That sort of equilibrium will take work to achieve and to maintain, as antibody levels ebb over time and new variants crop up. — Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic, 4 May 2022 The cold front will be making its way across the state starting Thursday, and storms could crop up in Houston in the afternoon and evening hours, meteorologists said. — Jay R. Jordan, Chron, 3 May 2022 Easter is prime time for ham and every year questions crop up about it. — Susan Selasky, USA TODAY, 15 Apr. 2022 Easter is prime time for ham and every year questions crop up about it. — Susan Selasky, Detroit Free Press, 13 Apr. 2022 The public only gets glimpses of these secretive groups when lawsuits crop up citing the existence of such cliques. — Justin Raystaff Writer, Los Angeles Times, 23 Mar. 2022 See More

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'crop.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

History and Etymology for crop

Noun

(senses 1-3) Middle English crop, crope, croppe "crop of a bird, portion of an herb above the root, sprig, bud, crown of a tree, harvest of a plant, tip or top of something," going back to Old English crop "crop of a bird, sprout, shoot, bunch or cluster (of fruit, seeds), umbel (also croppa, weak noun, only in sense "bunch, cluster"), going back to Germanic *kruppa- "something rounded, bulge," (whence also Old Saxon kripp "crop of a bird," Middle Dutch crop "gnarl, goiter, gullet, body, corpse, blister, bud," Old High German kropf "protuberance, goiter, crop of a bird," Old Icelandic kroppr "swelling on the body, crop of a bird" [Icelandic & Faroese kroppur "body"]), of expressive origin; (sense 4) derivatives of crop entry 2

Note: The Old English n-stem croppa is matched by Old High German kropfo "crop of a bird, bulbous onion." Old Icelandic krov "slaughtered animal with the entrails removed" points to an original paradigm *kruƀan- : *kruƀn-, with the latter resulting in *kruppa- by loss of the nasal, devoicing, and gemination (Kluge's Law). The early meaning of the etymon and its later semantic bifurcations are difficult to reconstruct with certainty. An original sense "something rounded, bulge, swelling" may have led, on the one hand, to "cavity in a slaughtered animal after the entrails are removed" and hence "body, corpse" (meanings in North Germanic and Middle Dutch), and on the other to "swelling in the throat, crop of a bird, goiter." The sense "sprout, bud" in West Germanic is a further specification of "swelling." The later development in English is not paralleled in the other languages. The sense "sprout, sprig" seems to have been generalized to "structures terminating a plant, as fruit, seeds, umbels" and then, on the one hand, to "upper part, tip or end of an object" (such as the stock of a whip) and, on the other hand, to "harvested fruit of a plant, yield of such harvested products in a season." Compare croup entry 1, group entry 1. See R. Lühr, Expressivität und Lautgesetz im Germanischen, Heidelberg, 1988, p. 235; R. Lühr et al., Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, Band 5 [2014], columns 816-18; G. Kroonen, Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Brill, 2013, p. 307.

Verb

Middle English croppen "to prune, trim, cut branches from (a bush or tree), derivative of crop, crope, croppe "sprig, bud, crown of a tree, tip or top of something" — more at crop entry 1

Note: The phrasal verb crop up is dependent on a geological sense of crop, "(of rock strata) to appear at the surface," a coal miners' term in the West Midlands in the seventeenth century, which is apparently a development of the noun sense "tip, end" ("to show itself at the exposed end"). Compare outcrop entry 1.

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