Word.ws English Dictionary

lop off

lop off verb: to cut off as the top or extreme part of anything, especially to prune a small limb off a shrub or tree, or sometimes to behead someone.

Verb

lop off (third-person singular simple present lops off, present participle lopping off, simple past and past participle lopped off)

  1. (transitive) To cut off as the top or extreme part of anything, especially to prune a small limb off a shrub or tree, or sometimes to behead someone.
    • Sinkfield reduced his guests to myopic drunkenness one evening, induced them to bring forward their maps and charts, lop off a little here, add a bit there, and adjust the center of the county to meet his requirements. He sent them packing next day armed with their charts and five quarts of shinny...1960 July 11, Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Philadelphia, Pa.; New York, N.Y.: J[oshua] B[allinger] Lippincott Company, →OCLC
    • TPE's Manchester Airport-Newcastle has both ends lopped off to become Manchester Victoria-York.2021 June 30, Philip Haigh, “Regional trains squeezed as ECML congestion heads north”, in RAIL, number 934, page 52
    Synonyms:
    snead

Synonyms of lop off

Forms of lop off

third-person singular presentlops off
present participlelopping off
past participlelopped off
pastlopped off

Origin of lop off

See lop.

Questions about lop off

What does lop off mean?
Lop off means to cut off as the top or extreme part of anything, especially to prune a small limb off a shrub or tree, or sometimes to behead someone.
What part of speech is lop off?
Lop off is a verb.
What is the past tense of lop off?
The past tense of lop off is lopped off.

Words near lop off in the dictionary

  1. lop
  2. lop chong
  3. lop down
  4. Lop Nor
  5. Lop Nur
  6. lop off
  7. lop-eared
  8. lop-sided
  9. Lopadea Nouă
  10. lopadolith
  11. lopadoliths

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lop off (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-lop off.wav.

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