Past tense of crop; cut short or harvested, or appeared unexpectedly.
From Old English cropp 'head of a plant, bunch, cluster,' related to crop 'to pluck, cut.' The photographic sense of cutting/trimming images emerged in the 20th century by analogy with cutting plants.
From harvesting grain to editing photos, 'crop' maintains the same essential meaning across millennia - we're always cutting away what we don't need to reveal what we do want, whether it's wheat from chaff or subjects from backgrounds.
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