¦ noun
1. 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.
2. an amount of related people or things appearing at one time: the current crop of politicians.
3. a hairstyle in which the hair is cut very short.
4. a riding crop or hunting crop.
5. a pouch in a bird's gullet where food is stored or prepared for digestion.
6. the entire tanned hide of an animal.
¦ verb (crops, cropping, cropped)
1. 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).
2. 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.
3. (crop up) appear or occur unexpectedly.
4. (crop out) (of rock) appear or be exposed at the surface of the earth.
Word 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'.