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Glite Dictionary
to overcrop

to overcrop

8.2
Grow crops on the same land too often so the soil loses its nutrients
  • verb
  • /ˈoʊvərˌkrɑp/
  • Specialized
translation icon : sobrecultivar
  • Farmers must be careful not to overcrop their fields, as this can lead to soil depletion.

Examples

  • If you overcrop the land, it may no longer yield good harvests.

  • To maintain soil health, avoid practices that overcrop and exhaust the land.

  • Now, this rejects other earlier theories that, for instance, that the soil of Attica had become exhausted through overcropping and so on.

Synonyms

to overexploit
vsto overcrop
1 7.4

Use things from nature like fish or trees so much that they disappear

focuses specifically on exhausting soil by repeated intensive cultivation
to overharvest
vsto overcrop
1 6.9

To take too many plants or animals so their numbers fall and cannot recover

focuses instead on soil exhaustion through overly frequent cultivation
to overplant
vsto overcrop
1 6.8

Putting too many plants in a space so it becomes crowded

is about exhausting soil through repeated intensive cultivation rather than crowding
to overcultivate
vsto overcrop
8.6

To farm land too much so it becomes less productive

is the same idea but is the common agricultural term

How Intensive

to overcrop
  • Specialized
8.2
to cultivate
38 4.0

Surface Forms

overcrop infinitive
overcropped past
overcropped past participle
overcropping present participle
overcrops third person singular

Morphology

overcrop = crop (transparent) = over + crop

Formed by the productive prefix 'over-' meaning 'excessive' plus 'crop', so the meaning 'to cultivate too much' is directly inferable.

Etymology

The word overcrop comes from the prefix over- meaning 'too much' and crop meaning 'plants you grow'. So to overcrop land is to grow or harvest crops there too often and use up the soil, which is why it means 'to exhaust land by cultivating it too intensively'.