Stefan Ram
2021-04-06 01:53:29 UTC
Reply
PermalinkI ask something that already is answered there. Sorry!)
I know that some people consider the cream of milk, or,
the "crème de la crème", to be the best part of the milk.
But how does /crop/ come into "the cream of the crop"?
Is it just to make the cr-cr alliteration? (But then it
could also be "cream of the crows" or something else.)
I think that crop has no cream in the literal sense.
"Crop" can also informally mean "a group of people
that arrive at the same time", and I find:
|the cream of the choicest men of the time
"Diana of the Crossways" - George Meredith
|the cream of the intellect of every generation
"Looking Backward 20001887" - Edward Bellamy
. Is it possible that the origin of "cream of the crop"
is a meaning like "the best of the class" where "crop"
stands for the class of a year, not for a plant?