[f. CROP v. + -ING1.] The action of the vb. CROP.
1. The action of polling or pruning; the gathering of the crop, etc.
1616. Surfl. & Markh., Country Farme, 550. The cropping or gathering of this Maslin.
1705. Hickeringill, Priest-craft, Wks. 1716, III. 193. Answer it all with a cropping of Ears, Pillory [etc.].
1855. Motley, Dutch Rep. (1861), I. 229. The cropping of the ears or the slitting of nostrils … practised upon the Puritan fathers of New England.
1870. H. Macmillan, Bible Teach., iii. 56. Blossoms … are often prevented from forming by the cropping of animals.
b. The shearing of cloth; also attrib.
1835. Ure, Philos. Manuf., 131. The cropping or shearing-machine. Ibid., 197. Shearing, or Cropping, is the next operation.
1888. F. Peel, Risings of Luddites, 10. The old method of finishing by hand, or cropping as it was called.
c. concr. That which is cropped; the wood lopped from trees, etc.
1768. Case of Jeffry Ruffle (Erskine v. Ruffle & Brewster), 7. The Defendant … had ten loads of croppings in the same year.
1795. Hull Advertiser, 10 Oct., 4/1. Green lanes where my poor ass may light of good croppings.
2. The raising of crops from land; also crops collectively.
1806. Gazetteer Scot. (ed. 2), 317. The farmers … by incessant cropping, have reduced the land to a sort of caput mortuum.
1861. Times, 27 Sept., 7/4. Ireland possesses a climate more favourable to the growth of grass and green cropping than for ripening a harvest of wheat.
3. Min. and Geol. The rising of strata to the surface; the portion of a stratum that appears on the surface, an out-crop; fig. the act of rising into view or into prominence. Also with up, out.
1679. Plot, Staffordsh. (1686), 129. Their rise, croping or basseting.
1831. J. Hodgson, in J. Raine, Mem. (1858), II. 210. On a slope of the croppings of the lowest beds of the mountain limestone.
1847. Emerson, Repr. Men, Shaks., Wks. (Bohn), I. 355. The cropping out of the original rock.
