Word.ws English Dictionary

cropping

cropping is the present participle and gerund of crop.

Noun

cropping (plural croppings)

  1. The act by which something is cut short or truncated.
    • The vet was regularly called upon to perform ear croppings.
  2. The growing of crops.
  3. An outcrop that is mined for the ore it contains.
    • Their croppings are either entirely barren or contain only a moderate amount of copper, but much richer ore is ordinarily found just above the chalcocite zone.1905, Waldemar Lindgren, The Copper Deposits of the Clifton-Morenci District, Arizona, page 207
    • The cropping of the Quincy ore-bearing bed, the equivalent of the Daly West bed, is stated to have been found at the east end of the present mine and just below the present wagon road.1912, John Mason Boutwell, Lester Hood Woolsey, Geology and ore deposits of the Park City district, Utah, page 121

Meaning of crop

Verb

crop (third-person singular simple present crops, present participle cropping, simple past and past participle cropped)

  1. (transitive) To remove the top end of something, especially a plant.
    • I will crop off from the top of his young twigs a tender one.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Ezekiel 17:22
  2. (transitive) To mow, reap or gather.
  3. (transitive) To cut (especially hair or an animal's tail or ears) short.
    • And the knave who refuses to drink till he fall, / Why the hangman shall crop him — ears, love-locks, and all.1890, George John Whyte-Melville, Holmby House: A Tale of Old Northamptonshire, page 92
  4. (transitive) To remove the outer parts of a photograph or other image, typically in order to frame the subject better.
    • Reduce to six inches wide and crop to eight inches high.1924, Harry Appleton Groesbeck Jr., “Preparation of Copy”, in The Process and Practice of Photo-engraving, Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, →OCLC, Indicating Sizes, page 234
  5. (intransitive) To yield harvest.
  6. (transitive) To cause to bear a crop.
    • to crop a field

See all 24 meanings of crop

Forms of cropping

pluralcroppings

Words formed from cropping

Phrases with cropping

Words that rhyme with cropping

1 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about cropping

What does cropping mean?
Cropping means the act by which something is cut short or truncated.
What is cropping the present participle and gerund of?
Cropping is the present participle and gerund of crop.
What part of speech is cropping?
Cropping is a noun.
What is the plural of cropping?
The plural of cropping is croppings.

Words near cropping in the dictionary

  1. croppers
  2. croppest
  3. croppeth
  4. croppie
  5. croppies
  6. cropping
  7. cropping out
  8. cropping up
  9. croppings
  10. Cropps
  11. croppy

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cropping (page history and authors); crop (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “cropping.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cropping. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.