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Lop   /lɑp/   Listen
Lop

verb
(past & past part. lopped; pres. part. lopping)
1.
Cut off from a whole.  Synonyms: discerp, sever.  "The soul discerped from the body"
2.
Cultivate, tend, and cut back the growth of.  Synonyms: clip, crop, cut back, dress, prune, snip, trim.



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"Lop" Quotes from Famous Books



... There are people who think these new shoots good as a sign of life in the tree, and this consideration might perhaps make their appearance welcome; but a great deal of strength is expended on their production, and it would be just as well to lop them off again. The old tree wants pruning and cutting back occasionally, and it is a false sentiment that is letting it fall to decay for the sake of ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand

... held?" The father opened his eyes, and looked at him and said, gruffly: "I am not carried away with any of these doctrines. I am established." A few days after they were getting out a load of wood. They put it on the cart. The father and the boy got on lop of the load, and tried to get the horse to go. They used the whip, but the horse wouldn't move. They got off and tried to roll the wagon along, but they could move neither the wagon nor the horse. "I wonder what's the matter?" said the father. "He's established," replied the ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody

... young people were there, Max and Dudley having been pressed into the service of filling cardboard drums with sweets for what Max called "the everlasting tree." The tree itself stood in a corner of the room, a colossal but lop-sided plant with a lamentable tendency to straggle about the lower branches, and an inclination to run to weedy and unnecessary ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden

... Though the empire disappeared because it had become an impossible rule in the modern world—being womanish, corrupt, and mediaeval—to the foreign mind the empire remained the acme of Chinese civilization; and to kill it meant to lop off the head of the Chinese giant and to leave lying on the ground nothing but a corpse. It was in vain to insist that this simile was wrong and that it was precisely because Chinese civilization had exhausted itself that a new conception of government had to be called in to ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale

... build and sure of foot, should go up first and try the strength of our work. Fritz went up next with some nails, and made the ropes fast to the tree, while I drove stakes in the ground to keep them firm at the foot. It was now time for me to mount, and up I went with an axe to lop off the twigs and smooth the bough that was to form the ground of our new house. I sent the boys down out of my way, and kept hard at work till it was late, for the sky was clear, and the moon lent me her beams of ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson Told in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin

... "Ye lop-sided shadow of a rookie!" Sorry he didn't throw the scoundrel overboard. Hal Overton is vindicated. Permission to join the rescue party. "Sound the recall." Stirring ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock

... oak with your Gladstonian axe; lop him of his branches; divide him into logs; pile him up into a pyramid; put a match to his base; in short, make a bonfire of him; and what becomes of robust majesty? He is reduced to ashes, you say. Ah, yes, but what proportion of him? Conduct your experiment carefully on ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... 'm blowed. I 'm a better man than Patch. I 'm tellin' yer. Is it me stump, Betsy? I has n't a hook hand like the Captain. Yer has got ter be linked all 'round. There 's no fun, I says, in bein' hugged by a one-armed man. Yer would be lop-sided in a week. ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks

... gold. A hoarse-voiced old turkey gobbler was booming his chug-a-lug from the highest ground, and the softer chick of hen turkeys answered him. Ellen was almost breathless when she arrived. Two packs and a couple of lop-eared burros attested to the fact of Antonio's return. This was good news for Ellen. She heard the bleat of lambs and tinkle of bells coming nearer and nearer. And she was glad to feel that if Isbel had visited her camp, most probably it was during ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey

... I could tell yer what I mean—" His face was puckered into a thousand wrinkles with the intellectual effort, and his little diamond eyes gleamed. "He could take a trumpery common thing like that there mug-faced, lop-eared hare and make it stand for the medi-what-you-call-it-forest. I've said to him, 'Come out with me on the old 'bus if you want green and loneliness and nature.' And he has said—I recollect one talk in particular—he ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... night was a contrivance of his own. It was between two long pieces of rock, a narrow passage which, after taking the axe to lop them off, he filled full of aromatic pine branches. These lay close and were elastic and yielding. Over them he stretched a blanket, upon which he rolled another piece of rock, which filled up one end ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... He's got a bent-in nose, an' a lop ear, an' a jaw like a hippo. He's won more bouts by scarin' his man stiff than any plug in the business. He'd been a champ long ago, if it wa'n't for a chunk of yellow in him as big as a grape fruit. No, I couldn't match up Swifty. I done the next best thing, though; I sent ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... vehicle, drawn by a horse that I should have called barrel-bodied but for contrast with his driver, in comparison with whom he was angular. In Germany every vehicle is arranged for a pair of horses, but drawn generally by one. This gives to the equipage a lop- sided appearance, according to our notions, but it is held here to indicate style. The idea to be conveyed is that you usually drive a pair of horses, but that for the moment you have mislaid the other one. The German driver is not what we should call a first-class whip. He is at his ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome

... mind, invariably display themselves in fretful impatience. But however this may be, the disposition in question has had both a favourable and an unfavourable influence on the structure of their pieces. Favourable, in so far as it has compelled them to lop off every superfluity, to go directly to the main business, to be perspicuous, to study compression, to endeavour to turn every moment to the utmost advantage. All these are good theatrical proprieties, and have been the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... LOP. Let everybody comment on my actions as much as they please. Each man regulates his conduct according to the goal he wishes to reach; since my love was rejected by you, I court ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere

... containing in herself all future types of European women? So I slept and woke, and slept again, day after day, week after week, in the lazy bullock-waggon, among herds of grey cattle, guarded by huge lop-eared mastiffs; among shaggy white horses, heavy-horned sheep, and silky goats; among tall, bare-limbed men, with stone axes on their shoulders, and horn bows at their backs. Westward, through the boundless ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... laboured all the more strenuously in her own sphere of esoteric science, and she even discovered that all esoteric science had a twofold element in it—masculine and feminine—and that all discoveries of occult mysteries engaged in by man alone, were, so to speak, lop-sided, and therefore valueless. So she conveyed herself secretly, by processes familiar to her, away from her husband, and took refuge in this region of Thibet in which we now dwell, and which, with all ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant

... pecking feebly at the ground, the heavy mattock apparently invested with a malicious life of its own, twisting perversely, heavily lop-sided in his hands, thought that this did not sound like a polite thing to say to a lady. And yet the way Vincent said it made it sound like a compliment, somehow. No, not that; but as though it were awfully important to him what Mrs. Crittenden did. ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... appeared to himself; for the glass, unlike the young girl's clear eyes, was an exaggerating and distorting medium; he had noticed that his wife's face in the smoke-room glass looked a good ten years older than the face he knew; he calculated, therefore, that this faint greenish tint, this slightly lop-sided elderly grimace were not truthful renderings of his complexion and his smile. And as (in spite of these defects, which you could put down to the account of the glass) the face Mr. Waddington saw was still the face of a handsome man, he formed a very favourable ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair

... The sheep, weather-beaten and dejected, followed the path with low heads nodding from side to side, as if they had traveled far and found little pasture. The black, lop-eared goats leaped upon the rocks, restless and ravenous, tearing down the tender branches and leaves of the dwarf oaks and wild olives. They reared up against the twisted trunks and crawled and scrambled among the boughs. It was like a company of gray downcast friends and a troop ...
— The Sad Shepherd • Henry Van Dyke

... That's his opinion. Ez far as my opinion goes, gen'l'men," continued Bill, with greater blandness and apparent cordiality, "I wanter simply remark, in a keerless, offhand gin'ral way, that ef I ketch any God-forsaken, lop-eared, chuckle-headed blatherin' idjet ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... each other across the tumult that remained. Now and then Ally and the children talked to Gwenda. They told her that the black and white cow had calved, and that the blue lupins had come up in the garden, that the old sow had died, that Jenny, the chintz cat, had kittened and that the lop-eared rabbit had a litter. ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair

... became a little too accommodating. They used their persuasives upon the donkeys so vigorously that they—the donkeys—started off on a lope, a sort of awkward, lop-sided gallop. Now, if there is anything that is beyond the ability of Master Jack, especially if he is old, it is to canter and at the same time preserve his equilibrium. It is evident that he ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... many trees close around it, so close that in some places their branches dragged against the walls when the wind blew; and some hung broken down; for no one seemed to take much charge of the place;—to lop the wood, or to keep the moss-covered carriage-way in order. Only in front of the house all was clear. The great oval drive was without a weed; and neither tree nor creeper was allowed to grow over the long, many-windowed front; at both sides of which a wing protected, ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... having no duty in that line to perform, had hunted us up, and, with his innate gallantry, was serving as a cannoneer at the gun. Offended at Shoemaker's insolent and ostentatious manner, we answered him as he deserved. Furious at such impudence and insubordination, he was almost ready to lop our heads off with his drawn sword, when Williamson informed him that he was a commissioned officer and would see him at the devil before he would submit to such ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore

... our journey came to an end at Kawaehae (usually pronounced To-a-hi—and before we find fault with this elaborate orthographical method of arriving at such an unostentatious result, let us lop off the ugh from our word "though"). I made this horseback trip on a mule. I paid ten dollars for him at Kau (Kah-oo), added four to get him shod, rode him two hundred miles, and then sold him for fifteen ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... he said to himself, with much warmth of spirit; "but his axe is getting dull; and to chop down that tree of mine will take him at least half an hour. Dead wood is harder to cut than live. And when he has done that, he must work till dark to lop the branches, and so on. I need not be afraid of anybody but this fellow. Now is my time, then, while he is away. Even if the old folk are at home, they will listen to my reasons. The next time he comes to hack my tree ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... Cyclops, Cyclops, where are flown thy wits? Go plait rush-baskets, lop the olive-boughs To feed thy lambkins—'twere the shrewder part. Chase not the recreant, milk the willing ewe: The ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus

... to be conceived that they mean to do it some mischief, as the body of one who maybe disobliged them in somewhat aforetime. She saith that I am not to say a word for aught that I may feel. But, should they put out mine eyes or draw my teeth or lop off my hands or play me any other such trick, how shall I do? How could I abide quiet? And if I speak, they will know me and mayhap do me a mischief, or, though they do me no hurt, yet shall I have accomplished nothing, for that ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... us lay, the most moderate notions as regarded reforms and innovations. It was no longer the king speaking, it was the consulting counsel for the crown, asking advice of everybody, and appearing to say to everybody: 'What's to be done? What can I do? How much do they want to lop from my authority? How much of it will they leave me?" [Memoires de M. Malouet, t. i. p. 249.] It was a tacit abdication of the kingship at the juncture when its traditional authority, if not its very existence, was ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... guid o' leave wi' a jaw like this?' wailed the lop-sided William who, with several other members of the billet, had been included ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell

... say in the government. He would expel all the monks and nuns, for they're like the mange: the weaker the sufferer, the more it thrives. To this argument Leandro, the elder son, added that as far as the monks, nuns and other small fry were concerned, the best course with them was to lop off their heads like hogs, and with regard to the priests, whether Catholic, Protestant or Chinese, nothing would be lost if there were ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... When most their Pride did swell, Vnder our Swords they fell, No lesse our skill is, Than when our Grandsire Great, Clayming the Regall Seate, By many a Warlike feate, Lop'd ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton

... off from the wharf-edge! Steady! Watch for a smooth! Give way! If she feels the lop already She'll stand on her head in the bay. It's ebb—it's dusk—it's blowing, The shoals are a mile of white, But (snatch her along!) we're going ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling

... unnatural ferocity of mind, or stupor of body." But let us consider whether to talk in this manner be not allowing that we are weak, and yielding to our softness. Notwithstanding, let us be hardy enough, not only to lop off every arm of our miseries, but even to pluck up every fibre of their roots. Yet still something, perhaps, may be left behind, so deep does folly strike its roots: but whatever may be left it will be no more ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... a physician!" Prescott called back. "Poor Garwood is unconscious, and cut. He's bleeding. Poor chap, with his lop-sided mind and his 'mastery of ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock

... murmured Inspector Weyling absently. He was thinking, as he spoke, of his rabbits, and wondering whether his wife would remember to give the lop-eared doe with the litter a little milk in the course ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... Ang Thong, Buriram, Chachoengsao, Chai Nat, Chaiyaphum, Chanthaburi, Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Chon Buri, Chumphon, Kalasin, Kamphaeng Phet, Kanchanaburi, Khon Kaen, Krabi, Krung Thep Mahanakhon (Bangkok), Lampang, Lamphun, Loei, Lop Buri, Mae Hong Son, Maha Sarakham, Mukdahan, Nakhon Nayok, Nakhon Pathom, Nakhon Phanom, Nakhon Ratchasima, Nakhon Sawan, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Nan, Narathiwat, Nong Bua Lamphu, Nong Khai, Nonthaburi, Pathum Thani, Pattani, Phangnga, Phatthalung, Phayao, Phetchabun, Phetchaburi, Phichit, ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... beautiful. The beauty is symbolic and infinite. It cannot be taken away. If the entire street-side of a row of common, ordinary middle-class trees were cut away there would be nothing to do with the maimed and helpless things but to cut them down—remove their misery from all men's sight. To lop away the half of a pine is only to see how beautiful the other half is. The other half has the infinite in it. However little of a pine is left it suggests everything there is. It points to the universe and beckons to the Night and the Day. The infinite still speaks in it. It is the optimist, ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee

... lop of the nave, are five different fresco, paintings which represent different acts relative to the life of the patron of the church. One represents the consecration of Saint-Romain as bishop; in another, he overthrows the pagan temples; farther on, is the miracle ...
— Rouen, It's History and Monuments - A Guide to Strangers • Theodore Licquet

... Just arrived!" called Naab cheerily, yet deep-voiced with the happiness he knew the tidings would give. "A dusty, dirty, shaggy, starved, lop-eared, ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey

... Upper Fall swings from the brink like a pendulum of silver and mist. Back and forth it lashes like a horse's tail. The gusts lop off puffy clouds of mist which dissipate in air. Muir tells of powerful winter gales driving head on against the cliff, which break the fall in its middle and hold it in suspense. Once he saw the wind double the fall back over its own brink. ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... Redding decidedly; "it's all very well to lop off a finger or a toe with a razor, but I don't think it's allowable for an amateur to attempt a foot except ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne

... Arab sheik,—shrunken to half size by the powerful compression; while the scimitar, so late whistling with perilous impetuosity through the air, was now seen lying upon the sand,—its gleam no longer striking terror into the hearts of those whose heads it had been threatening to lop off! ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid

... dares, and no Christian or Muhammadan will condescend, to lop off the heads of these young trees, and if they did, it would only put off the evil and inevitable day; for such are the vital powers of their roots, when they have once penetrated deeply into a building, that they will send out their branches again, cut them off as often ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... "Where cruder juices swell the leafy vein, Stint the young germ, the tender blossom stain; On each lop'd shoot a softer scion bind, 480 Pith press'd to pith, and rind applied to rind, So shall the trunk with loftier crest ascend, And wide in air its happier arms extend; Nurse the new buds, admire the leaves unknown, And blushing bend with fruitage ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... to lop around here for? Such a grand evening. Why don't you put on your things and run downtown, or over to Cora's ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber

... I followed Holmes into the stable yard, where he opened the door of a loose-box and led out a squat, lop-eared, white-and-tan dog, something between a ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... such a confounded difficulty as this of ours. For my part I don't hope, nor indeed wish, to see the Union restored as it was. Amputation seems to me much the better plan, and all we ought to fight for is the liberty of selecting the point where our diseased members shall be lop't off. I would fight to the death for the northern slave States and let ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry

... sounded. First they had to find the right kind of sapling, springy and strong. The sapling had to be in the right place—one by the goat trail, the other at the far end of the ledge. When they had been chosen, David had to shinny up them to lop off their branches. That was a very awkward business; the saplings swayed and trembled under his weight, and he could only use one hand for the hatchet. Then he had to make two stakes from stout, hard wood, cut a ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd

... negotiation; and convincing himself that one of his vistas towards Fortune was becoming more clear and clear, he turned, with the restless activity of some founder of destined cities in a new settlement, to lop the boughs that cumbered and obscured the others. For truly, like a man in a vast Columbian forest, opening entangled space, now with the ready axe, now with the patient train that kindles the slower fire, this child of civilized life ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... using a level, until he was satisfied that it was perfectly even. He then began pencilling out the form of the upper works, so that both sides might be exactly even, avoiding the risk of making the boat lop-sided. ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston

... after the occurrence I have described, when we were about mid Channel, we observed a vessel whose appearance was suspicious. It had just gone two bells, in the forenoon watch. It was blowing pretty fresh from the south-west, and there was a lop of a sea, but not enough to endanger a boat. We made sail towards the stranger, and as we neared her we perceived that she was veering about, apparently under ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston

... nothing in the world to do but amuse ourselves, if we can, and never any chance of pushing along. We have got it all; there is nothing to go for. That's what I first admired about my darling old Walter. He struck out a line of his own. If he had been content just to lop over the fence into Kencote Rectory, I don't think I should ever have fallen in love with him. I don't know, though. He is the ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall

... uninhabited, but had, within a year or two, been cheaply repaired to render it habitable; I say cheaply, because the work had been done in a surface manner, and was already decaying as to the paint and plaster, though the colours were fresh. A lop-sided board drooped over the garden wall, announcing that it was "to let on very reasonable terms, well furnished." It was much too closely and heavily shadowed by trees, and, in particular, there were six tall poplars before the front windows, ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens

... insulted. "Am I sure!! Why you lop-eared, sun-stroked jackass, of course I'm sure!!! Nugget McDermott is drawed to gold like nails to a magnet! Why when this here town was nothin' but ...
— Jubilation, U.S.A. • G. L. Vandenburg

... wood had all been cut off once, and it was now covered with a young growth, not large enough for firewood. It was but a short distance from the house, and the boys soon reached the spot, and commenced operations. They were each provided with large jack-knives, and with these they proceeded to lop off the young and tender ends of the birches, which trees were quite abundant in that spot; for birches are very apt to spring up after a pine forest has been cleared away. Many of the trees were yet so small, that the boys did not have to climb ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell

... Mr. Gilfil in those late years of his beneficent life "more of the knots and ruggedness of poor human nature than there lay any clear hint of it in the open-eyed, loving" young Maynard? Because "it is with men as with trees: if you lop off their finest branches into which they were pouring their young life-juice, the wounds will be healed over with some rough boss, some odd excrescence, and what might have been a grand tree, expanding into liberal ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... equipage of pride; Deduct what is but vanity or dress, Or learning's luxury, or idleness; Or tricks to show the stretch of human brain, Mere curious pleasure, or ingenious pain; Expunge the whole, or lop th' excrescent parts Of all our vices have created arts; Then see how little the remaining sum, Which served the past, and must ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope

... White Hussars children of the devil and sons of persons whom it would be perfectly impossible to meet in decent society. Yet they were not above making their aversion fill their money-belts. The regiment possessed carbines—beautiful Martini-Henri carbines that would lop a bullet into an enemy's camp at one thousand yards, and were even handier than the long rifle. Therefore they were coveted all along the border, and since demand inevitably breeds supply, they were supplied at the risk of life and limb for exactly their weight ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling

... up myself this year and bought it out of the ship. I am afraid as the evenings get shorter, Mr Arabin, you'll find the reading desk too dark. I must send a fellow with an axe and make him lop off some ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... seemed to have forgotten it himself. "Pike" fitted him, served all the purposes for which names were invented, was easy to pronounce, and therefore was all the name he needed. Pike was tall, round-shouldered, lop-sided, slouchy, good-natured, illiterate, garrulous, frankly vain of the little scraps of botanical nomenclature he had picked up and as lazy and unacquainted with soap as ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly

... had a habit of taking off her mental clothing, as she might take off a dress, and looking at it as though it belonged to some one else, and as though sensations were manufactured like clothes. This seems to be one of the easier ways of deadening sorrow, as though the mind could teach itself to lop off its feelers. Sybil particularly disliked this self-inspection. In the first place she did not understand it, and in the second her mind was all feelers, and amputation was death. She could no more analyse ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams

... world to silver. It was a dreary scene on which she shone; a dazzling plain of snow, broken by patches of hawthorns, and here and there by the gaunt shape of a pollard oak, since this being the outskirt of the forest, folk came hither to lop the tops of the trees for firing. A hundred and fifty yards away or so, at the crest of a slope, was a round-shaped hill, made, not by Nature, but by man. None knew what that hill might be, but tradition said that once, ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard

... due portion of anxiety felt by Mr. Bancroft, as to how the additional expense that must come, would be met. He did not see his way clear. After the babe was born, and he saw and felt what a treasure he had obtained, he was perfectly satisfied to make the best of what he had, and try to lop off some little self-indulgences, for the sake of meeting the new demands that were to ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur

... &c adj.; render short &c adj.; shorten, curtail, abridge, abbreviate, take in, reduce; compress &c (contract) 195; epitomize &c 596. retrench, cut short, obtruncate^; scrimp, cut, chop up, hack, hew; cut down, pare down; clip, dock, lop, prune, shear, shave, mow, reap, crop; snub; truncate, pollard, stunt, nip, check the growth of; foreshorten (in drawing). Adj. short, brief, curt; compendious, compact; stubby, scrimp; shorn, stubbed; stumpy, thickset, pug; chunky [U.S.], decurtate^; retrousse^; stocky; squab, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... like a green bay tree, I reckon," said the old man. "I've lopped a few branches off that rascal in my time, and if I have any luck I'll lop off a few more at this meeting.... Ole Maje Pettigrew is still the presiding judge ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan

... Link to the collie, after petting him and praising him for the exploit. "I'll have to learn you to drive milch cows easy an' quiet. You can't run 'em like you run sheep an' yearlin's. But apart from that, you sure done grand. You can lop off an hour a day of my work if I c'n send you reg'lar for the critters. That ought to be worth the price of your keep, by itself. Now if I c'n learn you how to milk an' maybe how to mow—well, 'twouldn't be a hull lot queerer'n the stunts ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune

... foundations of religion. All the different kinds of liberty are connected; the Philosophers and the Protestants tend towards republicanism, as well as the Jansenists. The Philosophers strike at the root, the others lop the branches; and their efforts, without being concerted, will one day lay the tree low. Add to these the Economists, whose object is political liberty, as that of the others is liberty of worship, and the Government may find itself, in twenty or thirty years, undermined ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various

... Alliance in Europe, and absolute Necessity obliges them to fix these perpetually in Great Britain. Upon which, as upon a Stock, they are ingrafted, spring forth, blossom and bear Fruit abundantly, and being once lop'd off from it, they would soon wither and perish; thus is it the Interest and Safety, as well as the Duty and Inclination of the Inhabitants of our Plantations, always to be subservient to the Government ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones

... The lop-horned heifer is a parent once more, and I am trying in my poor, weak way to learn her wayward offspring how to drink out of a patent pail without pushing your old father over into the hay-mow. He is a cute little quadruped, with a wild desire to have fun at ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... you find that each absurdity is invested with habits, strong interests, and chummy Congressmen. Attack all along the line and you engage every force of reaction. You go forth to battle, as the poet said, and you always fall. You can lop off an antiquated bureau here, a covey of clerks there, you can combine two bureaus. And by that time you are busy with the tariff and the railroads, and the era of reform is over. Besides, in order to effect a truly logical reorganization of the government, such as all candidates always ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... break into it easily—at least such an attempt would be so difficult as to make an entrance into the interior by the open side much more probable. When this was finished, they took the logs that Harry had cut and carried with so much difficulty from the wood, and began to lop off the smaller branches and twigs. One large log was placed across the opening of the trap, while the others were piled on one end of it so as to press it down with their weight. Three small pieces of stick were now prepared—two of them being about half a ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne

... with gore and heroism. Hakon himself assumed the pleasing appellation "Skull-splitter," and his classmate Frithjof Ronning was dubbed Vargr-i-Veum, which means Wolf-in-the-Temple. One Son of the Vikings was known as Ironbeard, another as Erling the Lop-Sided, a third as Thore the Hound, a fourth as Aslak Stone-Skull. But a serious difficulty, which came near disrupting the brotherhood, arose over these very names. It was felt that Hakon had taken an unfair advantage of the rest in selecting the bloodiest name at the outset (before anyone ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... he whooped. "Hell a humpin', where was you raised? You sure ain't a college man? Any lop-eared galoot that didn't play poker in Siwash would get run out by the Faculty. You ought to see our president put up his pile and draw to a pair of deuces. What!—a Reverend! I beg your pardon, friend. 'S all right. Jest name the game you're strong at and we'll try to accommodate ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch

... hand, no Christian teachers have made more of the active will than these pupils of Eckhart.[274] "Ye are as holy as ye truly will to be holy," says Ruysbroek. "With the will one may do everything," we read in Tauler. And against the perversion of the "negative road" he says, "we must lop and prune vices, not nature, which is in itself good and noble." And "Christ Himself never arrived at the 'emptiness' of which these men (the false mystics) talk." Of contemplation he says, "Spiritual enjoyments are the food of the soul, and are only ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... her from political and economic equality, classing her up to this very moment in rights with the idiot, the imbecile, and the criminal. Worse than this, they gave her a spurious homage, created a lop-sided chivalry, and caused her to accept as her ideal goal of womanhood the achievement of beauty and the entrance into wifehood. After they tied her hand and foot with restrictions and belittling ideals, they capped the climax by calling her weak and petty by nature ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson

... Autumn, like a gipsy bold, Doth gather near it grapes and grain, Ere Winter comes, the woodman old, To lop the ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall

... you or I have any call to pass judgment on it, or to lay down arbitrary lines, saying this is righteous, that is unrighteous. We may have our own thoughts about the matter—we must have, but we've no right to lop or stretch other people to fit them. Princess is a pure woman, a noble woman, better, a thousand-fold, than you or me or any other man that breathes. From her standpoint, what she does is right, and, whether we differ with her or not, we ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland

... know it will. I can't tell how it is, Johanna; but whenever I look at you, I feel so stern and hard to Ascott. It seems as if there were circumstances when pity to some, to one, was wicked injustice to others: as if there were times when it is right and needful to lop off, at once and forever, a rotten branch rather than let the whole tree go to rack and ruin. I would do it! I should think ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)

... hand, that soothed Woe's weary head! And quenched the eye, the pitying tear that shed! And mute the voice, whose pleasing accents stole, Infusing balm into the rankled soul! O Death! why arm with cruelty thy power, And spare the idle weed, yet lop the flower? Why fly thy shafts in lawless error driven? Is Virtue then no more the care of Heaven? But peace, bold thought! be still my bursting heart! We, not ELIZA, felt the fatal dart. Scaped the dark dungeon, does the slave complain, Nor bless the ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie

... slavery, but having no money he would have to steal it to purchase his freedom. The buffalo being the object of dispute would be confiscated, and to be even with the defendant for the loss of the buffalo, the plantiff would lop off the defendant's head if he were a man of means and could afford to pay 105 pesos fine ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... to keep his eyes averted from the men who sought his presence. He teased a little lop-eared spaniel, and nipped it till it yelped. But the President of Brittany never took his eyes off the strangers, examining them with a bold, keen, remorseless glance, in which, however, there was neither evil nor the tolerance of it. Not a man to make himself greatly beloved, this ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... not married a man?" he queried, "and does not the boy Cupid make women do things most wondrous strange in every land? Jose would fare as well without her watchful eye, but no power could make her think it,—so come she would on a lop-eared mule ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan

... suddenly, and Asmodeus, genius of Fire, descended to slow music, having in one hand a sword, and in the other the long tail of a lion. He informed the company that there had just been a great battle between the leaders of Lucifer and Adonai, and that it had been his personal felicity to lop the Lion's tail of St Mark; he directed the members of the eleven plus seven triangle to preserve the trophy carefully, and, that it might not be a lifeless relic, he had thoughtfully informed it with one of his minor devils until such ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite

... got his lame leg, bekase, ye see he's niver larned fur to manage it, an' goes limpity-lop, an' though he wears a cloak, is obligated fur to show the cow's fut whenever he talks wid any wan, fur if he doesn't, begorra, the leg does fur itself, fur it's niver forgot the thrick av kicking the owld cow larned it, an' if Satan waits a minnit, up goes the cow's ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.

... to a smile flickered round the shaven lips of the descendant of Hengist as, contemplating the lop ears of his horse, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... "Now, my pretty lop-sided little lover," laughed Herr Hippe, flinging Solon over his shoulder, as a fisherman might fling a net-full of fish, "we will proceed to put you into your little cage until your little coffin is quite ready. Meanwhile we will lock ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... the friendship of Lop-Ear, the warm lure of the Swift One, the lust and the atavism of Red-Eye? A screaming incoherence and no more. And a screaming incoherence, likewise, the doings of the Fire People and the Tree People, ...
— Before Adam • Jack London

... they were confident they would take the walls, he refused to make the assault, saying that Hellene cities ought not to be reduced to slavery, but brought back to a better mind, (10) and added, "For if we lop off our offending members, haply we may deprive ourselves of the means to ...
— Agesilaus • Xenophon

... little red cape and a pretty linsey dress, and her ears were quite slim and silky, and used to stand straight up, except when she was sad over anything. Then they used to lop down quite flat; when I saw them that way it made me sad, too. But when she was pleased and happy, they set straight up and she seemed ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine

... Was that ill-jointed lop-eared offspring of the man-beast an enemy, too? Were those twisting convolutions of this new creature's body and the club-like swing of his tail an invitation to fight? He judged so. Anyway, here was something of his size, and like ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood

... question. Why do you venture on the field of battle, where a bullet may plow through your breast or a cannon-ball lop off your head?" ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... have not written—why I have not asked you here, as I wished—with a great many other whys and wherefores, which will keep cold. In short, you must excuse all my seeming omissions and commissions, and grant me more remission than St. Athanasius will to yourself, if you lop off a single shred of mystery from his pious puzzle. It is my creed (and it may be St. Athanasius's too) that your article on T * * will get somebody killed, and that, on the Saints, get him d——d afterwards, which will be quite enow for one number. Oons, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... the Barke, the skin of our Fruit-trees, Least being ouer-proud with Sap and Blood, With too much riches it confound it selfe? Had he done so, to great and growing men, They might haue liu'd to beare, and he to taste Their fruites of dutie. Superfluous branches We lop away, that bearing boughes may liue: Had he done so, himselfe had borne the Crowne, Which waste and idle ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... education may have been, is always unconsciously performing those military evolutions styled marching to the right or left oblique,—acquiring thereby, it is said, that obliquity of the moral vision—which sooner or later afflicts every human being who inhabits this strange, lop-sided city-village. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... with suggestions of various races in him; his tail had intended to be long, but the hand of heredity had evidently shortened it, and the ears, long enough to lop, pricked slightly as his bright eyes smiled up at the girl, who laughed aloud as she took the ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten

... sure of no disturbance from the step of any native, here I often sat in a little bowered shelter of my own, well established up the rise, down which the path made zigzag, and screened from that and the bridge as well by sheaf of twigs and lop of leaves. It was a little forward thicket, quite detached from the upland copse, to which perhaps it had once belonged, and crusted up from the meadow slope with sod and mould in alternate steps. And being quite the elbow of a foreland of the meadow-reach, it yielded almost a "bird's-eye view" ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... creep throws a fit and belts me with four fists. "Dummkopf!" it says, and then I really get scared as he has got a lop of hair falling down over one eye and has a black mustache the size of a Venutian four centra stamp over his mouth which is like that of a ...
— Operation Earthworm • Joe Archibald

... and rich in phosphates. Plant out at the beginning of April in a mixture consisting of two parts road-grit, two parts table-scraps, and a deed of assignment, and by the end of October they will be throwing up magnificent clusters of yellow blossom. The Magellan Lop-eared is also hardy and prolific, though pugnacious if reared under glass. In the absence of a specified agreement a dose of tartaric acid that has been well stewed with the mutton left over from Sunday will usually put matters ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 8, 1916 • Various

... haste, and lop off a few pine boughs, and stick them into the ground, or even lean them against the roots of this old oak, and there, you see, will be a capital house to shelter us. To work, to work, you idle boys, or ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill

... as Doctor Grenfell uses in his winter journeys in going out from St. Anthony to visit patients, are still a different type. These are usually big lop-eared kindly fellows, and just as friendly as any dog in the world. The laws of Newfoundland provide a heavy fine upon any one bringing upon the island a Labrador dog that is related even remotely to ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace

... of you can haue the fortitude, To lop a limbe off, or pull out an eye, Or being in a heauenly seruitude, To free your selues would with the damned lye? Of force with me you now must all conclude, That mortall men are subiect to loues rod, ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale

... it was a monstrous crow's nest, but on returning the second week in May I saw a pair of Ospreys coming and going to and fro from the nest. I hoped the birds might return another season, as the nest looked as if it might have been used for two or three years, and was as lop-sided as a poorly made haystack. The great August storm of the same year broke the tree, and the nest fell, making quite a heap upon the ground. Among the debris were sticks of various sizes, dried reeds, two bits of bamboo fishing rod, seaweeds, some old blue mosquito netting, and some ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various

... been a meeting in the offices of the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company, New York. The quarterly report had had a startlingly lop-sided sound. After it was over Mrs. Emma McChesney, secretary of the company, followed T. A. Buck, its president, into the big, bright show-room. T. A. Buck's hands were thrust deep into his pockets. His teeth worried a cigar, savagely. Care, that clawing, ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber

... as much about soldiering as his young rider. Then Hannibal, the mule from Cadiz, that had served valiantly through battle and retreat, to die in a Tennessee stream bed. And now this bone-rack of a gray mule with one lop ear, a mind of his own, and a gait which could set one's teeth on edge when you pushed him into any show of speed. The animal's long, melancholy face, his habit of braying mournfully in the moonlight—until Westerners ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton

... for a moment, and felt as if I had seen a spectre; the resemblance was so exact—in size, in every detail, even to the little clumps of hair about the hind parts, even to the lop of half an ear, this dog might have been the doppelganger of the deceased Bingo. I suppose, after all, one black poodle is very like any other black poodle of the same size, but the ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various

... accuracy in figures, an arid lack of imagination, reduces conversation to the insipidness of flat wine, and Blaze's talk was never dull. He was a keen, shrewd, practical man, but somewhere in his being there was concealed a tremendous, lop-sided sense of humor which took the form of a bewildering imagery. An attentive audience was enough for him, and, once his fancy was in full swing, there was no limit to his outrageous exaggerations. A light of credulity in ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... groan, whether of pity for Rosamond or for herself might be doubted; and a lop-eared rabbit ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... the hollow, lifted the side of the tent, and there was Ben Gunn's boat—home-made if ever anything was home-made: a rude, lop-sided framework of tough wood, and stretched upon that a covering of goat-skin, with the hair inside. The thing was extremely small, even for me, and I can hardly imagine that it could have floated with a full-sized man. There was one thwart set as low as possible, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... and the ten to five, and still was undiscovered. Then, when again the Prairie-dog dropped down to seek more fodder, she made a quick dash, and bore him off kicking and squealing. Thus does the angel of the pruning-knife lop off those that are heedless and foolishly indifferent to the ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton

... most authoritative critic, as a detachment lined up at the bar of the neighboring saloon. "Merival must lop off this young dramatist or he'll 'queer' her with her best friends. She mustn't attempt to force this kind of thing down ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... few in number and resembled small destroyers. They were powerful craft and well armed, but their sea-keeping qualities left much to be desired. In fact, to use a naval term, they were dirty boats even in a "lop." It was said that if an officer or man had been for long in one of these ships he was proof against all forms of sea-sickness. A big assertion, as even old sailors will admit—but they ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife

... many tons of kernels are gathered every year by individuals who include thousands of natives. One reason why the savage takes naturally to this occupation is that it demands little work. All that he is required to do is to climb a tree in the jungle and lop off a regime. He uses the palm oil for his own needs or disposes of it to a member of his tribe and sells the kernels to the ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... the cynic (and for him) there are sin—as Africa alone knows how to sin—disease, of the dread zymotic types—and death; death peering through the doors of godowns, where the ivory tusks are piled; death in the dark back-streets of the bazaar, where tired policemen wage lop-sided warfare against insanitary habits and a quite impracticable legal code; death on the beach, where cannibal crabs parade in thousands and devour all helpless things; death in the scrub (all green and beautiful) where the tiny streets leave off and snakes claim heritage; death in the ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... back and I fell headlong, face downward, on the floor, the bundle flying ahead of me clear to the hearth. I picked myself up, rubbed my smarting palms and, in a vile humor, recovered the detestable cause of all the trouble. I boxed the lop-ears of the bonnet, and gave the apron a vicious shake, in restoring them to their respective pegs. Then, I backed down from the chair on which I had been standing, and started for the door. A feeble cry stopped me as if a shot had passed ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland

... are some of the chief differences between wolves, wild dogs, and domestic dogs. The ears of the wild animals are always pricked, the lop or drooping ear being essentially a mark of civilization; with very rare exceptions, their tails hang more or less and are bushy, the honest cock of the tail so characteristic of a respectable dog, being wanting. This is certainly ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... according to its age lay white or black at our feet. Of course we had a dog called Peary, and another one called Cooke. Peary was killed on the Barrier because he would not pull. Cooke, however, was still with us, and seemed to have been ostracized by his fellows, a position which in some lop-sided way he enjoyed. Loose dogs chased him at sight, and when Cooke appeared, and others were about, a regular steeplechase started. He also came up the Ramp with me one day: half-way up he suddenly turned and fled ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... silence over-long! Where I was wont to feed you with my blood, I 'll lop a member off and give it you In earnest of a further benefit, So you do condescend to help ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]

... to the accompanying report of the Secretary for information in relation to the Navy of the United States. While every effort has been and will continue to be made to retrench all superfluities and lop off all excrescences which from time to time may have grown up, yet it has not been regarded as wise or prudent to recommend any material change in the annual appropriations. The interests which are involved are of too important ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... look upon it with equanimity, for it is of the essence of his Americanism to distrust it. It is, however, so much a fact that to neglect a discussion of this personality would be to leave even so slight a sketch of Germany as this, hopelessly lop-sided. He so pervades German life that to write of the Germany of the last twenty-five years without attempting to describe William the Second, German Emperor, would be to leave every question, institution, and problem of ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... CH-RL-S ST-RT, 'Twas in a happier day, The Jaunting Car he drove in Went gaily all the way. But now the Car seems all askew, Lop-wheel'd, and slack of spring; Myself and WILL, in fear of a spill, Feel little disposed to sing, As we sit on the Jaunting Car, The drivers at open war, Seem little to care For a Grand Old Fare, As they fight for the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various

... pruning is the time of youth, age truly precious wherein you can still lop off useless branches which absorb a portion of the sap, depriving the others of that strength which they need in order to produce an abundance of savory fruit. You should attack not only those gross and manifest defects which disfigure the soul, but also those imperfections ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi

... Fichte, by slashing at God Himself. And meanwhile, we have to control a mass of ignorant persons whose obedience is linked to the farthest end of the chain (to the first superstition which I am called upon to lop off). We have here again a question of making the best of our cabin-fittings, the best of the opportunities which life places to our hand." In conclusion, he draws a contemptuous picture of the obscure and inconsequent existence which Gigadibs accepts, as the apostle without ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... them. What is more beautiful than the quincunx, which, whatever way you look, retains the same direct position? Planting them out so will also be of service to the growth of the trees, by equally attracting the juices of the earth. I should lop off the aspiring tops of my olive; it will spread more beautifully into a round form, and will produce fruit on more branches. A horse with slender flanks is considered handsomer than one not framed in that manner, and the same quality ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser

... monument of the Far North. It is not necessary to die. We are making you what we call a 'lob-stick,' or 'lop-stick.'" ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough

... expenditure of vitality at long, irregular intervals. He who is not regularly, or systematically employed incurs perpetual risk. "Of the thirty-two all-round athletes in a New York club not long ago," said a physician, "three are dead of consumption, five have to wear trusses, four or five are lop-shouldered, and three have catarrh and partial deafness." Dr. Patten, chief surgeon at the National Soldiers' Home at Dayton, Ohio, says that "of the five thousand soldiers in that institution fully eighty per cent. are suffering from heart disease in one ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... naturally rowed over to join the crowd. It was a long pull, and they stayed some little time while Dan bought the knife, which had a curious brass handle. When they dropped overside and pushed off into a drizzle of rain and a lop of sea, it occurred to them that they might get into trouble for neglecting ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling

... matters, fight with a long sort of foil, which has a very short lancet blade at the extreme point. Their object, like our old cudgel-players, is to draw first blood, only our Teutonic cousins, in drawing the blood, often lop off their friends' noses or slit open their cheeks from ear ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn

... people who live in the forest, the Ilongot support life by cultivating a forest clearing or "kaingin." The great trees are girdled, men ascend their smooth clean trunks a hundred feet or more and daringly lop away their branches and stems that the life of the tree may be destroyed and the sunlight be admitted to the earth below. At Patakgao I was shown some beautiful long pieces of the rattan an inch and a half in diameter with elaborately woven loops at the ends. These are swung from one tree top to ...
— The Negrito and Allied Types in the Philippines and The Ilongot or Ibilao of Luzon • David P. Barrows



Words linked to "Lop" :   shear, pollard, cut, break up, thin out, poll, pinch, top, disbud



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