Crossword clues for tillage
tillage
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Tillage \Till"age\, n.
The operation, practice, or art of tilling or preparing land for seed, and keeping the ground in a proper state for the growth of crops.
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A place tilled or cultivated; cultivated land.
Syn: Cultivation; culture; husbandry; farming; agriculture.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
late 15c., from till (v.) + -age.
Wiktionary
n. 1 the cultivation of arable land by plowing, sowing and raising crops 2 land that has been so cultivated
WordNet
n. arable land that is worked by plowing and sowing and raising crops [syn: cultivated land, farmland, plowland, ploughland, tilled land, tilth]
the cultivation of soil for raising crops
Wikipedia
Tillage is the agricultural preparation of soil by mechanical agitation of various types, such as digging, stirring, and overturning. Examples of human-powered tilling methods using hand tools include shovelling, picking, mattock work, hoeing, and raking. Examples of draft-animal-powered or mechanized work include ploughing (overturning with moldboards or chiseling with chisel shanks), rototilling, rolling with cultipackers or other rollers, harrowing, and cultivating with cultivator shanks (teeth). Small-scale gardening and farming, for household food production or small business production, tends to use the smaller-scale methods above, whereas medium- to large-scale farming tends to use the larger-scale methods. There is a fluid continuum, however. Any type of gardening or farming, but especially larger-scale commercial types, may also use low-till or no-till methods as well.
Tillage is often classified into two types, primary and secondary. There is no strict boundary between them so much as a loose distinction between tillage that is deeper and more thorough (primary) and tillage that is shallower and sometimes more selective of location (secondary). Primary tillage such as ploughing tends to produce a rough surface finish, whereas secondary tillage tends to produce a smoother surface finish, such as that required to make a good seedbed for many crops. Harrowing and rototilling often combine primary and secondary tillage into one operation.
"Tillage" can also mean the land that is tilled. The word "cultivation" has several senses that overlap substantially with those of "tillage". In a general context, both can refer to agriculture. Within agriculture, both can refer to any of the kinds of soil agitation described above. Additionally, "cultivation" or "cultivating" may refer to an even narrower sense of shallow, selective secondary tillage of row crop fields that kills weeds while sparing the crop plants.
Usage examples of "tillage".
When the agriculturists of China struck to obtain a reasonable allowance of electric power for their tillage, Gordelpus affected them with an evil atmosphere, so that they choked and died in thousands.
No craggy nor rockie places, nipt and blasted with sharpe windes, nor burnt with an vntemperate hotte Sunne, but vnder a sweet and pleasant temperature, in a moderate meane reioycing, betwixt two extreemes, the fields fruitful and without tillage and manuring, yeelding all commodities, warme hilles, greene woods and sweet coole shadowes.
It is true, the prices assigned by the assize of Richard were meant as a standard for the accompts of sheriffs and escheators and as considerable profits were allowed to these ministers, we may naturally suppose that the common value of cattle was somewhat higher: yet still, so great a difference between the prices of corn and cattle as that of four to one, compared to the present rates, affords important reflections concerning the very different state of industry and tillage in the two periods.
Tillage, underdraining, and thorough cultivation, are the means by which we develop and render this plant-food available.
The first edition of an illustrated work upon tillage and weaving was published in China in 1210, and contains an engraving of a loom constructed to weave flowered-silk brocades such as are woven at the present time at Suchow and Hangchow and elsewhere.
As they rode, the land began to get less fertile and less, till at last there was but tillage here and there in patches: of houses there were but few, and the rest was but dark heathland and bog, with scraggy woods scattered about the country-side.
The accumulated fertility in the land could then be made available by good tillage, and from that day to this, his land has been growing richer and richer.
Rolling farm fields with rubblestone walls spread out on either side of the road, here and there, boulders too big to be moved thrust up out of the tillage like tomb markers or the snouts of gigantic, petrified monsters of the underearth.
Then Psyches fell on her knees before her, watring her feet with her teares, wiping the ground with her haire, and with great weeping and lamentation desired pardon, saying, O great and holy Goddesse, l pray thee by thy plenteous and liberall right hand, by the joyfull ceremonies of thy harvest, by the secrets of thy Sacrifice, by the flying chariots of thy dragons, by the tillage of the ground of Sicilie, which thou hast invented, by the marriage of Proserpin, by the diligent inquisition of thy daughter, and by the other secrets which are within the temple of Eleusis in the land of Athens, take pitty on me thy servant Psyches, and let me hide my selfe a few dayes amongst these sheffes of corne, untill the ire of so great a Goddesse be past, or until that I be refreshed of my great labour and travell.
The tillage of the provinces of Gaul had been interrupted by the calamities of war.
And as one generation passes on and renovates the field of tillage for the next, I entertain a fancy that when the young men of to-day go forth into the forest they shall find the air still vitalised by the spirits of their predecessors, and, like those "unheard melodies" that are the sweetest of all, the memory of our laughter shall still haunt the field of trees.
I hold that the more arid and unreclaimed the soil where the Christian labourer's task of tillage is appointed him -- the scantier the meed his toil brings -- the higher the honour.
Cousins, most uncousinly, they tore each other and tore England between them, and yet life must go on, faith must go on, the stubborn defiance of fortune must go on in the husbandry of the year, season after season, plough and harrow and seed, tillage and harvest.
The vegetable gardens of the Gaye unfolded green and neat along the riverside, the uncut grass of the bank making a thick emerald barrier between water and tillage.