cropper

[ krop-er ]
See synonyms for cropper on Thesaurus.com
noun
  1. a person or thing that crops.

  2. a person who raises a crop.

  1. a person who cultivates land for its owner in return for part of the crop; sharecropper.

  2. a plant that furnishes a crop.

  3. a cloth-shearing machine.

Idioms about cropper

  1. come a cropper, Informal.

    • to fail; be struck by some misfortune: His big deal came a cropper.

    • to fall headlong, especially from a horse.

Origin of cropper

1
First recorded in 1475–85; crop + -er1

Words Nearby cropper

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

How to use cropper in a sentence

  • Despite some electoral successes, these efforts have largely come a cropper, especially with the defeat of Mitt Romney in 2012.

  • It was a beastly cropper—this wedding mess—and I've gone to pieces over it, for I did love Rosamond awfully.

    The Tigress | Anne Warner
  • Crikey, you should 'a seen 'im come a cropper on his nut down them new steps.

  • She began to wonder very much what was the matter with Rupert, and guessed that he had "come an awful cropper" of some kind.

    December Love | Robert Hichens
  • My colloquial Japanese comes a cropper now and then—but I get what I want, which is the main thing.

    A Journal from Japan | Marie Carmichael Stopes

British Dictionary definitions for cropper

cropper

/ (ˈkrɒpə) /


noun
  1. a person who cultivates or harvests a crop

    • a cutting machine for removing the heads from castings and ingots

    • a guillotine for cutting lengths of bar or strip

  1. a machine for shearing the nap from cloth

  2. a plant or breed of plant that will produce a certain kind of crop under specified conditions: a poor cropper on light land

  3. (often capital) a variety of domestic pigeon with a puffed-out crop

  4. come a cropper informal

    • to fall heavily

    • 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