What is "lopping"

Usage examples of "lopping".

Other Vrya, with less to occupy hands and minds, kneaded their Vrithli like clay, punching and pulling them into the shape they chose by whim or curiosity or obscure internal needs, ruthlessly squashing or lopping off any attempt of those Vrithli to grow in forbidden directions.

The dwarves cartwheeled and somersaulted, lopping off first her ears, then her nose and finally her lips.

In fact, so daring were their crimes that the home governments, stirred at last by these outrageous barbarities, seriously undertook the suppression of the freebooters, lopping and trimming the main trunk until its members were scattered hither and thither, and it was thought that the organization was exterminated.

But I swear on the red beardIt, of the Prophet that if they harm you in any way there will be sucha lopping of heads as will gorge every vulture in Araby until theycannot fly.

It had but two jump points in the system, one heading away from the demilitarized zone towards the capital world of Landreich, the other leading off on a long lopping pattern through half a dozen uninhabited systems into the flank of the Kilrathi Empire.

Once he managed to fall solidly asleep and began to dream of the round-faced man of the four coins holding out a wedge of green cheese on a glowing platter while a great wooden clock behind him chimed the hours and paintings of the sun and moon on the dock face spun dizzily, lopping off the days as if they were seconds.

Inside, I found the lopping shears I knew had to be there, since her hedges were as neatened as the row of stones.

The weather, for many a day and night, has been so wet that the trees seem wet through, and the soft loppings and prunings of the woodman's axe can make no crash or crackle as they fall.

For, if the only slitting of one ear in a stag hath been found sufficient to propagate the defect through a whole forest, why should we wonder at the greatest consequences, from so many loppings and mutilations, to which the ears of our fathers, and our own, have been of late so much exposed?

The circle or double hedge that I had made, was not only firm and entire, but the stakes which I had cut off of some trees that grew thereabouts, were all shot out, and grown with long branches, as much as a willow tree usually shoots the first year after lopping its head.

The argument ranged from one table to the other all through dinner, with some favoring a weeding out of the candidates to the most likely, lopping off those who were very young or who had had multiple opportunities to Impress.

Eddie was bending over a whining table saw, lopping off boards as if slicing bread, while two new helpers climbed about the framed building, hammering nails with syncopated blows.

The older man went down on one knee to dig with his lopping knife, just as Naill had done before him.