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definitions

cropper

[krop-er]
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SEE MORE SYNONYMS FOR cropper ON THESAURUS.COM

noun

a person or thing that crops.
a person who raises a crop.
a person who cultivates land for its owner in return for part of the crop; sharecropper.
a plant that furnishes a crop.
a cloth-shearing machine.

Idioms

    come a cropper, Informal.
    1. to fail; be struck by some misfortune: His big deal came a cropper.
    2. to fall headlong, especially from a horse.

Origin of cropper

First recorded in 1475–85; crop + -er1
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019
British Dictionary definitions for come a cropper

cropper

noun

a person who cultivates or harvests a crop
  1. a cutting machine for removing the heads from castings and ingots
  2. a guillotine for cutting lengths of bar or strip
a machine for shearing the nap from cloth
a plant or breed of plant that will produce a certain kind of crop under specified conditionsa poor cropper on light land
(often capital) a variety of domestic pigeon with a puffed-out crop
come a cropper informal
  1. to fall heavily
  2. to fail completely
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012