to crop (land) to excess; exhaust the fertility of by continuous cropping
intransitive verb
2.
to produce a crop in excess of what is permitted, agreed on, or normally required, esp. in an attempt to gain added profits by circumventing government regulations
noun
3.
a mark of identification on cattle, which is made by cutting a piece from the upper margin of the ear
Word origin
[1560–70; over- + crop]This word is first recorded in the period 1560–70. Other words that entered Englishat around the same time include: clinch, identity, radial, sector, vertexover- is a prefixal use of over, occurring in various senses in compounds (overboard; overcoat; overhang; overlap; overlord; overrun; overthrow), and especially employed, with the sense of “over the limit,” “to excess,” “toomuch,” “too,” to form verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and nouns (overact; overcapitalize; overcrowd; overfull; overmuch; oversupply; overweight), and many others, mostly self-explanatory: a hyphen, which is commonly absent fromold or well-established formations, is sometimes used in new coinages or in any wordswhose component parts it may be desirable to set off distinctly