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Etymology and origin of the English word lop

Pronunciation

lop1 to cut off

Confidence
Unknown
First attested
1355–1356 a Latin record from Windsor
Ultimate origin
Middle English loppe

Etymology

The verb meaning to cut off is formed from Middle English loppe (“small branches and twigs trimmed from trees”),[2][3][4][5][6] which the Middle English Dictionary derives from Medieval Latin loppa,[7] while Etymonline calls the English and the Latin words both of unknown origin.[2] The OED thinks the noun the source of the verb rather than the reverse; an Old English *lopp could go back to a form meaning "what is stripped off", from a root seen in leaf, but the word does not appear before the 15th century.[4] Hoad and the Shorter Oxford compare Lithuanian lùpti (“to strip, to peel”),[8][5] and Hoad assumes an Old English verb *loppian, implied in the participle lopped,[8] which Weekley found in a charter place name, “æt loppede thorne”, quoted by Skeat.[9] Barnhart records the place name “Loppedthorn” in 1287.[3][2] Klein calls the word of uncertain origin.[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Twigs and small branches trimmed from trees: lopp in a Latin record from Windsor of 1355–56.[7][3] The verb, to cut the branches off a tree, is first recorded in 1519, in William Horman's Vulgaria.[4][3][6]

Semantic evolution

The participle lopped, trimmed, is recorded from 1458,[3] and Etymonline dates the verb itself, implied in it, to the mid-15th century.[2] The English noun appears in a Middle English treatise on farming, Palladius on Husbondrie, of about 1420,[4] and the phrase lop and top, for waste branches, is in Spenser, whom Johnson (1755) quotes.[11][4] Shakespeare used the verb of cutting off a person's limbs or head (Titus Andronicus, 1594) and of pruning branches (Richard II, 1597),[4] and the extended sense "to cut down, reduce by cutting" grew from these.[4][12] Weekley suggests that it may be connected with lop2, to hang loosely, since lopping applies especially to the removal of drooping branches.[9] The English Dialect Dictionary records lop, the small branches and shoots cut from a tree or hedge, and lop-wood, in many counties from Yorkshire and Lincolnshire to Dorset.[13]

Timeline

  • 1355–56 – lopp, twigs trimmed from trees, in a Latin record.[7][3]
  • c. 1420 – the smaller branches of trees, faggot-wood.[4]
  • 1458 – lopped, trimmed.[3]
  • 1519 – to cut the branches off a tree, to trim.[4][3][6]
  • 1575 – noun, the lopping of a tree (obsolete by 1600).[4]
  • 1594 – to cut off a person's limbs or head, in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus.[4]
  • 1597 – to cut off branches from a tree, in Shakespeare's Richard II.[4]

Meanings

Verb

  1. To cut the branches or twigs off a tree; to trim or prune: They lopped the old pear tree back to the trunk.[6][12][4]
  2. To cut off a branch or other part, usually with off or away.[6][12][4]
  3. To cut out or reduce as excessive: The editor lopped ten pages from the report.[12][4]
  4. (archaic) To cut off the head or limbs of a person.[6][4]

Noun

  1. The smaller branches and twigs cut from a tree, especially those not measured for timber, as in lop and top.[6][4][12][13]

Word family

  • lopper
  • unlopped

lop2 to hang loosely, droop

Confidence
Uncertain
Formation
Onomatopoeia
First attested
1578 Henry Lyte's translation of Dodoens's Niewe Herball

Etymology

The verb meaning to droop is perhaps imitative,[6][4][5] and closely akin in sense to lob, to droop;[4][5][8][3] Etymonline takes it as probably a variant of lob or of the verb lap,[2] and Barnhart as probably a variant of lap, as flop is of flap.[3] Partridge and Weekley likewise compare lap and lob.[14][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

To hang loosely or limply, to droop: 1578, in Henry Lyte's translation of Dodoens's Niewe Herball;[4][3] Etymonline dates it to the 1570s.[2]

Semantic evolution

From 1587 the verb was also used of a person moving in a slouching way or hanging about idly,[4] and in 1895, mixed with the sense of lope, also of an animal moving in short bounds.[4] In American colloquial speech lop down meant to sit or lie down (1839).[4] Compounds describe things that hang or lean: lop-eared, with drooping ears, from the 1680s,[2][8] and lopsided, from 1711, which was at first spelled lapsided and used of a ship heavier on one side.[2][3][9] The rabbit called a lop takes its name from lop-eared.[5][4] In dialect the verb meant to hang loosely or to droop, of plants, in Nottinghamshire, East Anglia and Surrey, and to walk slowly or slouch in Cheshire, Berkshire, Kent, Hampshire and the south-west.[13]

Timeline

  • 1578 – to hang loosely, to droop.[4][3][6]
  • 1587 – to slouch, to hang about idly.[4]
  • 1828 – transitive, to let the ears droop.[4]
  • 1839 – lop down, to sit or lie down (US colloquial).[4]
  • 1868 – noun, a rabbit with long drooping ears, in Darwin.[4]
  • 1895 – to move with short bounds, in Kenneth Grahame's The Golden Age.[4]

Meanings

Verb

  1. To hang loosely or limply; to droop or flop about.[6][4][5]
  2. To move or act in a lazy, slouching way; to hang about.[6][4][5]
  3. To move with short leaps; to bound.[6][4]
  4. Of an animal: to let (its ears) droop.[4][5]

Adjective

  1. Hanging down: lop ears.[6]

Noun

  1. A breed of domestic rabbit with long ears that hang down beside the head.[6][4][5]

Word family

  • lop-eared
  • lopsided
  • loppy

Usage notes

Other words spelled lop are a dialect word for a flea, probably from Old Norse, akin to leap;[4][5][6] an imitative nautical word for short, choppy waves;[5][6] and an Old English word loppe, a spider, obsolete after 1400.[4][7]

References

  1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  7. ^ a b c d Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
  8. ^ a b c d Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  9. ^ a b c d Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  10. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  11. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  12. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  13. ^ a b c Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
  14. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
Cite this entry

“Lop.” Etymologically, 7 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/en/lop. Accessed 7 Nov. 2026.

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