The Collaborative International Dictionary
Collop \Col"lop\, n. [Of uncertain origin; cf. OF. colp blow, stroke, piece, F. coup, fr. L. colophus buffet, cuff, Gr. ?]
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A small slice of meat; a piece of flesh.
God knows thou art a collop of my flesh.
--Shak.Sweetbread and collops were with skewers pricked.
--Dryden. -
A part or piece of anything; a portion.
Cut two good collops out of the crown land.
--Fuller.
Wiktionary
n. 1 (context Northern English dialect English) A slice of meat. 2 (label en obsolete) A slice of bacon, a rasher. 3 A roll or fold of flesh on the body. 4 A small piece, portion, or slice of something.
Wikipedia
A collop is a measure of land sufficient to graze one cow. In Irish tradition, a collop is defined as the amount of land deemed capable of producing enough to support one family, or the number of cattle that the family could rear by pasture on it. It was the basis for the division of common land in the western parts of Ireland in the 18th and early 19th centuries. As in the Rundale system, the collop was scattered over several different fields, so that good and bad land was equally divided. In Eric Cross's The Tailor and Ansty, Timothy "the Tailor" Buckley describes a collop as "an old count for the carrying power of land", noting that it was the grazing of one cow, or two yearling heifers, or six sheep, or twelve goats, or six geese and a gander, while a horse would require three collops. He describes it as a superior method of reckoning land to the acre, noting a man whose holding of 4,000 acres of barren land produces scarcely enough to feed four cattle.
Usage examples of "collop".
Inside the stable, others more fortunate stood in stalls, but they were such horses as will snap at you when you pass by them, and Inman turned and watched as a claybank mare bit a collop of flesh as big as a walnut out of the upper arm of one of the old market-bound men passing through the hall on the way to his room.
In the clearing Taran saw some dozen men sprawled around a cook fire, where collops of meat hung sizzling on a spit.
Drawn up beside it was a strange little town, and as they got closer Hester and Tom could see that people were scrambling up and down the spoil-heap, sifting out collops of melted metal and fragments of unburnt fuel.
Two of the company, who were dressed in the weather-stained green doublet of foresters, lifted the big pot off the fire, and a third, with a huge pewter ladle, served out a portion of steaming collops to each guest.
And three tins of bully, a collop of butter, and a four-pound tin of biscuits.
The auldest o' them said to her mither: "Mither, bake me a bannock, and roast me a collop, for I'm gaun awa' to seek my fortune.
Result, the end which sank under you before now pops wide, and spouts forth a stream of Baedekers red as collops.
Our giants again found their way to the larder, and broke their fast with collops, rashers, carbonados, a shield of brawn and mustard, and a noble sirloin of beef, making sad havoc with the latter, and washing down the viands with copious draughts of humming ale.
On his saddle-bow lay a net, filled with a variety of mushrooms--bolets of all kinds, blewits, chanterelles, Jew's ears--and now, seeing a fine flush of St Bruno's collops, he sprang from his horse, seized a bush, and scrambled up the bank.
So Kay went to the kitchen and to the mead-cellar, and returned, bearing a flagon of mead, and a golden goblet, and a handful of skewers, upon which were broiled collops of meat.
Her collops wobbled uncontrollably, her vast belly heaved and trembled as she sucked breath, and sometimes she attempted to slap her thigh, producing a wet splat of sound.
There might be too many of them, before and behind, for him to strike them all before they cut him to collops like the poor dead soldiers whose bodies he shuffled through as he advanced.
Cooter's burst splashed upwards from the tank's glacis plate, blasting collops from the sheath and ceramic core.