Cropped

How to spell cropped

7 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce cropped

What does cropped mean?

1. verbCut, trimmed, or shortened something, especially by removing its edges or top.
2. adjectiveCut or styled to be short, especially of clothing, hair, or images.

Cropped in a sentence

• verb

  She cropped the photograph to remove the cluttered background.

• adjective

  She wore a cropped jacket that ended at the waist.

• verb

  The barber cropped his hair close for the summer heat.

• adjective

  His neatly cropped beard suited the formal interview.

Where does cropped come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past form of the verb 'crop', which traces straight back to the Old English noun 'cropp', meaning the rounded top or head of a plant, and also the pouch in a bird's throat. The same Germanic root produced related words in Dutch and German for a bird's crop and for a swelling or lump. Because the top of a plant is the part you gather, the noun gave rise to the farming sense of a 'crop' as harvested produce, and from there to the verb meaning to cut off the top of something. By the medieval period the verb had broadened to mean trimming or cutting anything short, whether hair, hedges, or, much later, the edges of a photograph. The double 'p' in 'cropped' is simply the regular English rule that a single final consonant doubles after a short stressed vowel before -ed, the same pattern seen in 'stopped' and 'shopped'.

How the word is built

• crop (Old English cropp: top or head of a plant)
• -p- (consonant doubled after a short stressed vowel)
• -ed (past tense / participle suffix)