Etymology

crop

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Today it means: A plant, grown for it, or its fruits or seeds, to be harvested as food, livestock fodder, or fuel or for any other economic purpose. Full definition →

Middle English crop ← Old English cropp ← Proto-West Germanic *kropp
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crop · noun1

  1. Proto-Indo-European · inherited from*grewb-“to warp, bend, crawl”
  2. Proto-Germanic · inherited from*kruppaz“body, trunk, crop”
  3. Proto-West Germanic · inherited from*kropp
  4. Old English · inherited fromcropp
  5. Middle English · inherited fromcrop
  6. English todaycrop

From Middle English crop, croppe, from Old English cropp, croppa (“the head or top of a plant, a sprout or herb, a bunch or cluster of flowers, an ear of corn, the craw of a bird, a kidney”), from Proto-West Germanic *kropp, from Proto-Germanic *kruppaz (“body, trunk, crop”), from Proto-Indo-European *grewb- (“to warp, bend, crawl”). Doublet of group. Cognates Cognate with Dutch krop (“crop”), German Low German Kropp (“a swelling on the neck, the craw, maw”), German Kropf (“the craw, ear of grain, head of lettuce or cabbage”), Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish kropp (“body, trunk”), Faroese and Icelandic kroppur (“body”). Related to crap. Doublet of group and croup.

crop · verb2

  1. Old English · inherited from*croppian
  2. Middle English · inherited fromcroppen“to cut, pluck and eat”
  3. English todaycrop

From Middle English croppen (“to cut, pluck and eat”), from Old English *croppian. Cognate with Scots crap (“to crop”), Dutch kroppen (“to cram, digest”), Low German kröppen (“to cut, crop, stuff the craw”), German kröpfen (“to crop”), Icelandic kroppa (“to cut, crop, pick”). Literally, to take off the crop (top, head, ear) of a plant. See Etymology 1.

Words from the same roots

Old Englishcropp all →

Cropley

Proto-Germanic*kruppaz all →

croup

Proto-Indo-European*grewb- all →

croftcroupKrog

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.