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lea-crops

Noun
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Fodder or forage crops grown in a meadow, ley, or pasture field, carrying pastoral and agricultural associations in nature verse.

Detailed Definition
This is a hyphenated compound for crops associated with a lea, meaning a meadow or pasture. It is a poetic, agricultural expression rather than a common modern term. Rossetti uses it to stress how rain supports grazing land.
Example
Example in poetry:
Wordsworth’s “Michael” recalls land so poor that there was “Never indeed a flock or herd / To graze upon the lea-crops”; Lea-crops are grasses or crops growing on a lea, an open meadow or pasture; “The sheep found little nourishment among the lean lea-crops” emphasizes rural scarcity; In pastoral poetry, meadow vocabulary such as lea, sward, and pasture can make labor and landscape inseparable
Additional Notes
The hyphenated agricultural term "lea-crops" is unusual and specialized, so readers are likely to pause at the quoted line.; Found in the poem, Winter Rain by Christina Rossetti
Also Known As
meadow crops pasture yields field harvests agrarian produce
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