■ noun
1》 a plant cultivated on a large scale for food or other use, especially a cereal, fruit, or vegetable.
↘an amount of a ~ harvested at one time.
2》 an amount of related people or things appearing at one time: the current ~ of politicians.
3》 a hairstyle in which the hair is cut very short.
4》 a riding ~ or hunting ~.
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 ( ~s , ~ping , ~ped )
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 ~) from an area.
↘sow or plant (land) with plants that will produce a ~.
↘(of land or a plant) yield a harvest.
3》 ( ~ up ) appear or occur unexpectedly.
4》 ( ~ out ) (of rock) appear or be exposed at the surface of the earth.
Word History
The word ~ 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 ~ and riding ~ . 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'.