🛏️ A baby bed 🌍 A starting place 🤱 To hold gently ⛏️ A mining box 🥍 To carry in lacrosse 💧 To wash gold 🌾 To cut grain

to cradle

9.9

Cut grain by hand with a long tool that holds plant stalks

verb
/ˈkreɪdəl/

Archaic

: segar

With careful technique, she could cradle the rye efficiently during the reaping process.

Examples

He learned how to cradle the grain properly with the tool to ensure a clean cut.
She was about to cradle pace with that sickle, and Hannah took her hand away.

Fiction book (1995)
Farmers used a cradle to harvest the wheat during the summer season.

Synonyms

to scythe

vsto cradle

1 7.4

To cut grass or crops using a long curved blade

focuses on cutting grain with a frame that gathers stalks

Antonyms

to plant

361 1.0

To put seeds or young plants into the soil so they grow

Idioms

from the cradle to the grave

Informal

2 4.0

Lasts from a person's birth to their death

to rob the cradle

NSFW

2 8.7

Date or marry someone much younger, often seen as wrong by others

Compounds

cradle-to-grave

5 7.3

Lasting for a person's whole life or for the whole time something exists

cat's cradle

1 8.1

A children's game using a loop of string to make shapes or a tangled situation

cradle cap

1 5.8

A patch of yellow, greasy, scaly skin on a baby's scalp

cradle robber

Offensive

8.8

A person who dates someone much younger than them

cradle snatcher

Offensive

8.7

A person who dates someone much younger

sea cradle

Specialized

9.9

A sea animal with a shell of eight hard plates that clings to rocks

How Mechanized

combine

6 6.1

to cradle

Archaic

9.9

to reap

104 3.1

to gather

129 1.6

Surface Forms

cradle infinitive

cradled past

cradled past participle

cradling present participle

cradles third person singular

Etymology

A farming cradle was the frame on a scythe that held cut grain like a little bed, so to cradle the oats meant to cut and collect them using that frame. The tool 'held' the stalks while people harvested.