Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
to crop out

to crop out

1 8.4
To appear at the ground surface as a rock or mineral
  • phrasal verb
  • Specialized
: aflorar
  • During the excavation, they found that the valuable minerals had cropped out at the surface.

Examples

  • The scene itself occupies about four feet in the center; in reproductions, the blank portions on either side, which extend upward to give the plate a truncated U shape, are typically cropped out.

    Academic text (2012)

  • In the mountains, granite can sometimes crop out from beneath the soil.

  • As we hiked along the trail, we noticed that the sandstone had begun to crop out along the cliffs.

Synonyms

to outcrop
vsto crop out
  • Specialized
1 7.5

To come out of the ground so rock can be seen

is written as two separate words rather than one

How Exposed

to protrude
19 5.8
to crop out
  • Specialized
1 8.4
to emerge
264 3.5
to surface
164 3.9

Surface Forms

crop out infinitive
cropped out past
cropped out past participle
cropping out present participle
crops out third person singular

Morphology

crop + out

The particle 'out' conveys emergence/exposure, which partly signals the MWE meaning, but the provided sense of 'crop' (to cultivate/harvest) does not directly mean 'appear'. There is a related verbal pattern (crop up/out; outcrop) that gives a metaphorical sense of something coming to the surface, so the relation is partly recoverable but requires some exposure or domain knowledge, especially in geological usage.

Etymology

Crop out comes from a simple picture: when soil is removed, a rock or layer seems to crop up and out of the ground. So, it now means 'appear at the surface'.