agricultural

Pluralagriculturals

1. 1
   adjective

   Relating to agriculture: to the cultivation of crops and the raising of livestock.

   The region's agricultural output rose sharply after the new irrigation system was built.

   Government subsidies support agricultural producers during a poor harvest.

   Similaragrarian, farming

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A product or commodity produced by farming, especially one traded as a good.

   Corn remains the country's most valuable agricultural.

   Traders watched the prices of agriculturals climb steadily during the drought.

   Note

   The noun belongs to the markets. Adam Dunsby, John Eckstein and Jess Gaspar's Commodity Investing (2008) divides commodities into energy, metals and agriculturals, and that grouping is the word's natural setting. It is most at home in the plural, as a label for a whole class of traded goods. When you mean a single crop, name the crop instead.

3. 3
   adjectivederogatoryeuphemisticUK

   Coarse or unrefined in manner; lacking sophistication or good taste.

   The critics dismissed his prose as agricultural, all bluntness and no finesse.

   She found his agricultural table manners hard to ignore at the gala.

   Similarcrude, coarse, unrefined, unsophisticated, boorish

   Oppositerefined, sophisticated, polished, elegant

   Note

   A British put-down that borrows the farm to avoid a blunter word. Calling manners or prose agricultural calls them boorish while sounding almost polite. The softening is only on the surface, and the insult is plain to anyone who hears it. Context keeps it apart from the literal farming sense: an agricultural college is a place, but an agricultural remark is a slight.

4. 4
   adjectiveeuphemisticUK

   Clumsy or tactless; carried out crudely and without finesse.

   The defender's agricultural challenge earned him a yellow card.

   He played an agricultural shot, hacking the ball over the fielders.

   Similarclumsy, crude, ham-fisted, inelegant

   Oppositedeft, skillful, elegant

   Note

   On the British sports field, the same polite jab is aimed at technique. An agricultural tackle, stroke or finish is one carried out with crude force instead of skill. The word fits any action that hacks where it should place, so it covers more than the cricket stroke. Like the 'uncultured' sense, it mocks while sounding mild.

5. 5
   adjective

   Of a stroke, played with a wild, sweeping motion, as though swinging a scythe.

   The tailender's agricultural heave cleared the boundary by some distance.

   He fell to an agricultural shot, missing a wild swing across the line.

   Similarwild

   Oppositeorthodox, classical

   Note

   Cricket borrows the farmyard for a stroke that mows rather than strikes. It describes a cross-batted swing that puts power ahead of orthodox technique and usually sends the ball toward the leg side. The word is rarely kind: it praises the result while mocking the method. It is narrower than the general 'clumsy' sporting sense, because it names one particular swing of the bat.

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