top-dressv.
a. transitive. To manure on the surface, as land, grass, or any crop. Also absol.
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the world > food and drink > farming > cultivation or tillage > preparation of land or soil > fertilizing or manuring > fertilize or manure [verb (transitive)]
gooda1525
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manure1577
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top-dress1733
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side-dress1888
1733 W. Ellis Chiltern & Vale Farming 15 Much better than top-dressing the Grain after it is in the Ground.
1764 Museum Rusticum (1765) 3 xii. 47 The advantages of top-dressing wheat in the spring with soot, or other light manure.
1852 Beck's Florist June 117 To enable us to ‘top-dress’, as it is termed; i.e. to clean the surface, and cover it with a mixture of half-rotten manure and loam.
b. transferred and figurative.
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1834 Tait's Edinb. Mag. New Ser. 1 381/2 Before I was sixteen, [I] grinded, and partly top-dressed the Autobiography and Opinions of Men and Things, at home and abroad, of Stephen Fox, Esq.
1849 F. B. Head Stokers & Pokers (1851) i. 13 The wealth..almost without metaphor top-dressed the greater portion of the old as well as of the new world.
1862 G. J. Whyte-Melville Inside Bar 342 Plumtree was a mere boy,..actually shaving for whiskers, top-dressing with balm of Columbia, and raising an abundant crop of pimples as the result.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1913; most recently modified version published online June 2019).
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