▪ I. † ˈcroppy1 Obs. rare.
[dim. of crop n. 1–2.]
Throat, stomach, maw.
| a 1529 Skelton El. Rummyng 561 This ale, sayde she, is noppy..It coleth well my croppy. |
▪ II. croppy2
(ˈkrɒpɪ)
[f. crop n. 13 or v. 8 b.]
a. One who has his hair cropped short; applied esp. to the Irish rebels of 1798, who wore their hair cut very short as a sign of sympathy with the French Revolution. Also croppy-boy.
| 1798 Ballad in Madden Lit. Rem. United Irishmen (1887) 122 Down Croppy, down Orange, down great, and down small. c 1801 Remin. fugitive Loyalist in Eng. Hist. Rev. July (1886) 539 Several of them..swore they would die with me or make the ‘Croppies lie down’, alluding to a loyal song in which the rebel party was so styled. c 1830 (title) The Croppy Boy. 1861 May Const. Hist. (1863) II. xvi. 536 The wretched ‘croppies’ were scourged, pitch-capped, picketed..and shot. 1898 Westm. Gaz. 14 Jan. 2/2 What form of higher education you deem at once most suitable for Croppy Boys and least objectionable..to their Protestant overseers. 1949 D. M. Davin Roads from Home 59 A line of papists and croppy-boys and Galway rebels. |
b. Austral. A convict.
| 1800 J. Elder Jrnl. 25 Dec. in Austral. Lit. Stud. (1966) II. 215 An attack from the Irish Croppies. 1830 R. Dawson Present State of Australia viii. 299 He had a constable's staff, and considered himself..as a look-out constable for croppy, (as they always call the runaway convicts). 1848 H. W. Haygarth Bush Life in Australia i. 9 Mr. Longbow..was..robbed..by the well-known ‘croppies’—‘Black Joe’ or ‘Irish Jem’. |
¶ The following appear in Dictionaries.
| 1847–78 Halliwell, Croppy, a Roundhead. 1873 Slang Dict., Croppie, a person who has had his hair cut, or cropped, in prison. Formerly those who had been cropped (i.e. had their ears cut off and their noses slit) by the public executioner were called croppies; then the Puritans received the reversion of the title. |