Croft Meaning

/kɹɒft/
B2

Definition, CEFR level B2, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.

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nounAn enclosed piece of land, usually small and arable and used for small-scale food production, and often with a dwelling next to it; in particular, such a piece of land rented to a farmer (a crofter), especially in Scotland, together with a right to use separate pastureland shared by other crofters.

verbTo do agricultural work on one or more crofts.

Mr Croft was comfortable with his cushy sinecure.
CEFR Practice Quiz
The old farmer lived in a small stone ____ with a thatched roof.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
Mr ____ was comfortable with his cushy sinecure.

The noun is derived from Middle English croft, crofft, croffte, croofte, crofte (“croft”), from Old English croft (“enclosed field”); further etymology uncertain, but possibly from Proto-Germanic *kruftaz (“a hill; a curve”), from Proto-Indo-European *grewb- (“to bend; arch, crook, curve”); see also crop. The English word is cognate with Middle Dutch kroft, krocht, crocht (“high and dry land; a field on the downs”), Middle Low German kroch (“enclosed piece of farmland or pasture”), Scots croft, craft (“croft”). The verb is derived from the noun.

"Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft / The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; / And gathering swallows twitter in the skies." — 1819 September 19, John Keats, “To Autumn”, in Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems, London: […] [Thomas Davison] for Taylor and Hessey, […], published 1820, →OCLC, stanza 3, page 139:

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CEFR Practice Quiz
The old farmer lived in a small stone ____ with a thatched roof.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
Mr ____ was comfortable with his cushy sinecure.

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