crop

American  

[krop] / krɒp /

noun

• crops
  plural

1. the cultivated produce of the ground, while growing or when gathered.

   the wheat crop.

2. the yield of such produce for a particular season.

3. the yield of some other product in a season.

   the crop of diamonds.

4. a supply produced.

5. a collection or group of persons or things appearing or occurring together.

   this year's crop of students.

6. the stock or handle of a whip.

7. Also called riding crop.  a short riding whip consisting of a stock without a lash.

8. Also called craw.  Zoology.

   1. a pouch in the esophagus of many birds, in which food is held for later digestion or for regurgitation to nestlings.

   2. a chamber or pouch in the foregut of arthropods and annelids for holding and partly crushing food.

9. the act of cropping.

10. a mark produced by clipping the ears, as of cattle.

11. a close-cropped hairstyle.

12. a head of hair so cut.

13. an entire tanned hide of an animal.

14. Mining. an outcrop of a vein or seam.

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verb (used with object)

• crops,
  present (3rd person singular)
• cropped,
  past participle,  past
• cropt,
  past participle,  past (Archaic)
• cropping
  present participle

1. to cut off or remove the head or top of (a plant, grass, etc.).

2. to cut off the ends or a part of.

   to crop the ears of a dog.

3. to cut short.

   cropped t-shirts.

4. to clip the ears, hair, etc., of.

5. Photography. to cut off or mask the unwanted parts of (a print or negative).

6. to cause to bear a crop or crops.

7. to graze off (the tops of plants, grass, etc.).

   The sheep cropped the lawn.

verb (used without object)

• crops,
  present (3rd person singular)
• cropped,
  past participle,  past
• cropt,
  past participle,  past (Archaic)
• cropping
  present participle

1. to bear or yield a crop or crops.

2. to feed by cropping or grazing.

adjective

1. (of women’s casual garments) shorter than is usual.

   a crop top that bares your midriff;

   crop pants that end at mid-calf.

verb phrase

1. crop up to appear, especially suddenly or unexpectedly.

   A new problem cropped up.

2. crop out

   1. Geology, Mining. to rise to the surface of the ground.

      Veins of quartz crop out in the canyon walls.

   2. to become evident or visible; occur.

      A few cases of smallpox still crop out every now and then.

crop British  

/ krɒp /

noun

1. the produce of cultivated plants, esp cereals, vegetables, and fruit

2. 1. the amount of such produce in any particular season

   2. the yield of some other farm produce

      the lamb crop

3. a group of products, thoughts, people, etc, appearing at one time or in one season

   a crop of new publications

4. the stock of a thonged whip

5. short for riding crop

6. 1. a pouchlike expanded part of the oesophagus of birds, in which food is stored or partially digested before passing on to the gizzard

   2. a similar structure in insects, earthworms, and other invertebrates

7. the entire tanned hide of an animal

8. a short cropped hairstyle See also Eton crop

9. a notch in or a piece cut out of the ear of an animal

10. the act of cropping

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verb

1. to cut (hair, grass, etc) very short

2. to cut and collect (mature produce) from the land or plant on which it has been grown

3. to clip part of (the ear or ears) of (an animal), esp as a means of identification

4. (also intr) to cause (land) to bear or (of land) to bear or yield a crop

   the land cropped well

5. (of herbivorous animals) to graze on (grass or similar vegetation)

6. photog to cut off or mask unwanted edges or areas of (a negative or print)

crop Idioms  

More idioms and phrases containing crop

• cream of the crop

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Synonym Usage

Crop, harvest, produce, yield refer to the return in food obtained from land at the end of a season of growth. Crop, the term common in agricultural and commercial use, denotes the amount produced at one cutting or for one particular season: the potato crop. Harvest denotes either the time of reaping and gathering, or the gathering, or that which is gathered: the season of harvest; to work in a harvest; a ripe harvest. Produce especially denotes household vegetables: Produce from the fields and gardens was taken to market. Yield emphasizes what is given by the land in return for expenditure of time and labor: There was a heavy yield of grain this year.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• cropless
  adjective
• noncrop
  adjective
• uncropped
  adjective
• well-cropped
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• crops
  plural

Participles

• cropping
  present
• cropped
  past
• cropt
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• crop
  simple
• crops
  simple
• have cropped
  perfect
• have cropt
  perfect
• has cropped
  perfect
• has cropt
  perfect
• am cropping
  progressive
• are cropping
  progressive
• is cropping
  progressive
• have been cropping
  perfect progressive
• has been cropping
  perfect progressive

Past

• cropped
  simple
• cropt
  simple
• had cropped
  perfect
• had cropt
  perfect
• was cropping
  progressive
• were cropping
  progressive
• had been cropping
  perfect progressive

Future

• will crop
  simple
• will have cropped
  perfect
• will have cropt
  perfect
• will be cropping
  progressive
• will have been cropping
  perfect progressive

Etymology

Origin of crop

First recorded before 900; Middle English, Old English crop, cropp “sprout, ear of wheat (or other grain), paunch, crown of a tree”; cognate with German Kropf; see croup ²

Explanation

A crop is a large amount of one kind of fruit or vegetable that's grown on a farm. Your farmer uncle's corn crop might be especially large after a summer with plenty of rain. A major crop in parts of Asia is rice, while the coffee bean crop is important to the economics of several African and South American countries. A different kind of crop is the short whip that some riders use on horses — and when you crop something, you cut it short. You might decide to crop your hair at the beginning of the summer each year. The noun came first, originally defined as "the top of a sprout or herb."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

crop crops cropped cropt cropping

The emergence of industrial crushing in the 1910s transformed the crop.

From Salon ● Sep. 13, 2026

Elevated costs for diesel, fertilizer and other farm inputs have increased production expenses across the agricultural sector, creating headwinds for farmers and supporting higher crop prices, he noted.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 13, 2026

Osman asked him if the gloves would be off should the judges get overly critical of the new crop of contestants, and the dancer joked he was "waiting for that judges' debrief".

From BBC ● Sep. 10, 2026

Deere executives hope farmers will realize the benefits of more automation after using the AI assistant, then be inclined to purchase additional software for their harvesters, crop sprayers, planters and other equipment.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 9, 2026

Imaginary numbers never appeared in linear equations, but they began to crop up in quadratic ones.

From "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea" by Charles Seife

"And what if crops could one day obtain nitrogen directly from atmospheric N2?"

From Science Daily ● Sep. 19, 2026

In the past, some in the community considered wild boar and deer pests for damaging their gardens and crops, she said.

From Barron's ● Sep. 17, 2026

The following spring, Georgia’s surveyor-general Henry Yonge planted Bowen’s unfamiliar “Chinese vetches” and harvested three crops in a single season.

From Salon ● Sep. 13, 2026

The tool required farmworkers to bend down over rows of crops given its short length, a task they often had to do for hours.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 6, 2026

Along with the crops, they were useful commodities in the marketplaces of each city in the trade networks initially established by the Toltecs.

From "An Indigenous People’s History of the United States" by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Wildlife traders often describe animals as needing to be "rehomed", rather than explicitly offering them for sale, and post tightly cropped images of their wares to avoid revealing their locations.

From Barron's ● Sep. 10, 2026

The image was cropped, enhanced to improve contrast, and corrected to remove lens artifacts.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 15, 2026

A wide river of cropped hair, crisp T-shirts, and adrenaline stretching almost 500 feet to Herndon, where they’re held back by an invisible dam about to burst.

From Slate ● Jun. 24, 2026

Mahnoor says he also cropped images of her with a group of friends, to make it appear that she was standing with a single man, insinuating that they were having an affair.

From BBC ● Jun. 21, 2026

“Of course there isn’t,” said Harry, who became angry every time this subject cropped up.

From "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" by J.K. Rowling

Mr. Klein then placed a clean, but cropt, copy of the first Aldine Pindar before me; adding, that he understood it to be rare.

From A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three by Thomas Frognall Dibdin

It is however but too manifest that this precious volume has been cropt in binding--which is in red morocco.

From A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three by Thomas Frognall Dibdin

Time has not cropt the roses from your cheek, though sorrow long has washed them.

From Familiar Quotations A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to Their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature by John Bartlett

Pride has a fall, they say: and I was proud— Proud as a thistle; and a donkey’s cropt The thistle’s prickly pride.

From Krindlesyke by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

Yet good Gentlemen, looke well about you, and remember how Tiberius plaid the Fox with the Senate of Rome, and how Fabius Maximus cropt his ears for his cunning.

From The Simple Cobler of Aggawam in America by Nathaniel Ward

Stories like this are cropping up more frequently now that major studios are coming to understand that viewers want original stories from new voices.

From Salon ● Aug. 24, 2026

Deutsche Bank recently found the phrase “broad-based” cropping up repeatedly in earnings calls.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 13, 2026

The group's discussions see the same patterns keep cropping up.

From Barron's ● Jun. 25, 2026

The process got more mechanized through the back half of the American Century—out with the cover cropping, in with the monocrop, packed tight as can be.

From Slate ● Apr. 20, 2026

“It keeps cropping up, doesn’t it?” she said.

From "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" by J.K. Rowling

Related Words

• output
• produce
• product
• yield