cropping

Pluralcroppings (some meanings)

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of crop.

   He spent the afternoon cropping the hedge into a neat shape.

   Cropping the image too tightly cut off part of the signature.

   Note

   One spelling carries several kinds of cutting: trimming a plant's top, clipping hair or an animal's ears short, framing a photograph, and mowing or reaping. Almost all of these take an object (cropping the hedge, cropping the image). The exception is land that is cropping well, which means it is yielding a harvest. Once the gerund takes 'the' and 'of', it has become the noun for cutting short.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act of cutting something short or removing part of it so that less remains.

   The cropping of the manuscript's margins destroyed several handwritten notes.

   Careful cropping turned a cluttered snapshot into a clean portrait.

   Similartrimming, cutting, clipping

   Note

   The noun can count single procedures as well as name the activity. A vet performs ear croppings, one for each animal, while careful cropping of a snapshot names the whole operation. The plural croppings fits this sense when each cut is a separate, repeated act on a body, as with ears or tails.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The activity of growing crops on farmland for food or other agricultural use.

   Intensive cropping over many seasons can exhaust the soil's nutrients.

   The estate's cropping shifted from wheat to higher-value vegetables.

   Similarcultivation, farming, tillage, planting

   Note

   A farmer's and agronomist's word, and it often works as a modifier. A cropping system is a farm's whole plan of which species to grow, in what sequence, and at what time of year. Intensive cropping means working the same ground season after season. Unlike the noun for cutting short, this sense is about raising plants, not trimming them.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A surface exposure of rock that is mined for the ore contained within it.

   Prospectors traced the cropping along the ridge to estimate the vein's size.

   The company began digging where the cropping broke through the hillside.

   Similaroutcrop, outcropping

   Note

   A miner's and geologist's term for where an ore body shows at the surface. It is a close cousin of outcrop. What shows at the surface can mislead: Waldemar Lindgren, writing in 1905 on the Clifton-Morenci copper district, found the croppings barren or only moderately rich, with better ore lying deeper. The word often names a particular bed: Boutwell and Woolsey (1912) write of the cropping of the Quincy ore-bearing bed.

Showing meanings only. Show all 4