Ksenia
What does "a bumper crop" mean in the sentence below? Thank you for you help :) Actually there was some point in hanging about the van as it was being unloaded. What you did - if you were one of these juniors - was to follow back and forth from the storeroom the two men on overalls carrying the big cardboard boxes, asking them what was inside. "A lot of goodies, sweetheart," was the usual reply. Then if you kept asking: "But is it a bumper crop?" they'd sooner or later smile and say: "Oh, I'd say so, sweetheart. A real bumper crop, " bringing a thrilled cheer.This is the quote from the novel "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro.
Dec 2, 2017 4:58 PM
Answers · 6
3
The “crop” is the harvest. A “bumper crop” is an exceptionally good harvest. Exceptionally good big amounts of corn, or whatever. Maybe they are using the phrase metaphorically to mean there is an exceptionally big, good collection (of whatever it is they are talking about).
December 2, 2017
3
A "bumper crop" isn't everything in the bunch, as Andrei has said. It's when the harvest brings in more crops than you were expecting (due to higher than normal rainfall, a lack of pests, good luck, or really anything else). So in this story, everyone cheers because the two men were reporting that the harvest was larger than normal.
December 2, 2017
1
Literally a bumper crop is a crop that has yielded an unusually productive harvest. Figuratively speaking this is an abundance of something.
December 2, 2017
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