supported.

http://www.bartleby.com/61/92/L0249200.html

1. To cut off (a part), especially from a tree or shrub: lopped off the dead branches. 2. To cut off a part or parts from; trim: lopped the vines back; lopped her curls shorter. 3. To eliminate or excise as superfluous: lopped him from the payroll.

http://www.bartleby.com/61/94/L0249400.html

To run or ride with a steady, easy gait.
NOUN:A steady, easy gait.

lop, v.
[...]
[with ADVERBIAL OF
DIRECTION] move in a
loping or slouching way:
he lopped towards the
plane.
[New Oxford Dictionary of English]

Is this usage rare?

lop (2)
lop (past and past participle lopped, present participle lop·ping, 3rd person present singular lops)
verb
Definition:
1. transitive and intransitive verb droop: to hang, or allow something to hang, loosely
2. intransitive verb move awkwardly: to move with an awkward slouching posture
[Late 16th century. Probably suggesting the action of flopping about]
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/dictio...

lop2
Pronunciation
lap
Inflected Forms lopped, lopping, lops
Definition1.to droop or be suspended loosely; hang down.
Example Some dogs' ears lop.
Definition2.to move or walk about awkwardly or droopingly, esp. in a slouch.
Definition3.to proceed rapidly by hopping.
http://www.wordsmyth.net/live/home.php?script...

Pronunciation: (lop), [key]
—v., lopped, lop•ping,
—adj.

—v.i.
1. to hang loosely or limply; droop.
2. to sway, move, or go in a drooping or heavy, awkward way.
3. to move in short, quick leaps: a rabbit lopping through the garden.
http://www.infoplease.com/dictionary/lop

Well, the (seemingly few) dictionaries that list 'to lop' in that sense do not mark it as rare, but I can't say I have ever come across it in everyday communication. I would have also said that it should be spelled 'lope'.

@Doris: I've never heard of it being used this way. But I see now it is listed in that sense in the Oxford Concise, too, under

"lop 2: N. Amer. or archaic 1 hang loosely or limply. 2 lope."

OED under "lop 2" makes it clear, I would argue, that it's not really the sense of "lope" that we're interested in here (i.e. "trotten"); the two examples (except for the first from 1587!) use a preposition after the verb -- "lop round", "lop about" -- which a) tends in the direction of "flop round" & "flop about", and b) is clearly not being used in the sense of "lope"/"trotten":

2. a. intr. To move in a slouching manner; to ‘hang about’ idly. Also to lop about.
1587 M. Grove Pelops & Hipp. (1878) 122 To take the vewe this boyish clowne dyd nothing aye appall,+ But loppeth to the vpper end, his cap vpon his head. 1852 Mrs. Stowe Uncle Tom's C. viii, She+cried about it, she did, and lopped round, as if she'd lost every friend she had. 1881 Besant & Rice Chapl. of Fleet i. x. (1883) 74 Some debauched, idle fellow who lies and lops about all day.

Whether "lop" without a preposition (or even with) is used today in the sense of "lope" in N. America I can't say.

Check with hm--us if possible.

At any rate, "to lope" ought to be added to the list at "trotten" even if "to lop" is not taken off the list yet. For the British and Irish "to lope" does seem to be the familiar word.

@Doris: I've just checked in M-W Unabridged.

"to lop" is also listed there in the sense you have dug up, and an example is given which makes me recognize the word in that sense, namely, "a rabbit ... lopped among the darkening cabbages". Yes, I've come across this use of the word before, especially of the movement of rabbits: that sort of hopping they do when they're just browsing around and not racing across a field.

(But then that is definitely not the same meaning as "to lope" and I don't think one would ever really say a rabbit was loping or loping around.)

(So what I'm suggesting is that there are two verbs "to lop" and "to lope" that are both verbs of movement/motion, but that only the latter really serves as a translation of "trotten".)

Having had time to read Fury's contribution (#3) more carefully ...

This confirms what I have written in ##4-6: "to lop" does exist, in the sense of moving awkwardly, flopping, and also in the sense of proceeding rapidly by hopping.

Neither of those two senses, however, correspond to "trotten".

"to lope", however, does correspond to "trotten".

So I must uphold my original request for the entry "to lop - trotten" to be amended, not because "lop" is rare, but because, while indeed also a verb of motion, it has a different meaning to "trotten".

After reading Phillipp's comment -and my own #3 properly (*smile*)-, I agree with him that to lop does not correspond to trotten, and so I would support deletion (or correction) of the current entry.

Webster's 3rd unabridged:
4lop - 1: to hang downward esp. in a loose or limp manner: flop or sway about loosely: DROOP 2: to move or act in a lazy and usu. slouching manner 3: to move with short leaps: BOUND {a rabbit ... lopped among the darkening cabbages —H.E. Bates} {used to lop around in the gymnasium after badminton or handball —Dorothy Baker}

This looks like a prime candidate for our list of dictionary artifacts: a word that still appears in a few dictionaries, but isn't really used at all (in this sense).

I would have assumed it was a mistake for either 'lope' or 'flop' (or perhaps a confusion of the two). I just asked two other AE speakers and they've never heard of it either. One guessed it might be a conflation of 'leap' and 'hop.' It sounded very odd to all of us.

In my opinion, if anything even vaguely like this sense is left in LEO, it should at least be marked rare or obsolete, unless someone can find a lot of current examples.

W3 does list it. Since it doesn't give dates the way the OED does, I looked up the two writers it cited. H.E. Bates was English, 1905-1974, and Dorothy Baker was American, 1907-1968, so the quotes could have been from anywhere from the 1920s through the 1950s. (The main text of W3 dates to 1961, I believe, though there have been corrections and additions since then.)

The only use of 'lop' in conjunction with rabbits that I'm familiar with is 'lop-ear(ed),' which is from W3 sense 1 'to hang downward' (though W3 gives it a separate entry as an adjective).

So if the question is the choice between AE and archaic, I would certainly lean more toward archaic, though I don't know how we can prove the difference between that and just rare.

I do agree that 'trotten' doesn't seem to match even any of these unfamiliar definitions.

[[NB: This note has to do with "to lop" as applied to rabbits.

-- It is used of rabbits, and I'm personally quite happy with this use of the word. That it's not archaic would seem to be proved by such sentences as (hm #9 -- "unless someone can find a lot of current examples"):

1) "I am mildly allergic to cats (not at all to dogs), and just found a rabbit lopping down the highway tonight (why I'm here and reading this thread) and have ..."
2) "Over to the left a Jack rabbit lopping off a little ways and looking back to see if I'm coming towards it. That is the only sound, except the sound of my ..."
3) "The inhabitants bolted into shelter like rabbits lopping off to their burrows. They were scared out of their wits. Some of them, however, ran to the police ..."
4) "There were rabbits lopping about among the ancient reef net boats on the spit forming the bottleneck. A martin with light mahogany fur trotted along the ..."

A) The verb in this sense seems always to be followed by a preposition: down, off, along.
B) It doesn't seem to be a terribly common use. As such I would incline to mark it as "rare".]]

lopping rabbits seem to be a thing of the past.

books.google.com/books?id=JMYNAQAAMAAJ
1864 (It's a compilation of snippets, so impossible to know the origins of the person who orinially wrote the anecdote.) Among other incidents of the battle of Murfreesboro', we heard of one in which a soldier observed a rabbit lopping across the field under a heavy fire.

books.google.com/books?id=JK7RAAAAMAAJ
1898 (from England): If any one walking late sees the white rabbit lopping at his heels, he makes no effort to drive it away, but quickens his pace,

books.google.com/books?id=shI6AQAAMAAJ
1902 (from England): Others start with a series of short hops like a rabbit lopping over high grass

I agree with the OP that lope = trotten.

In addition, I agree with everything hm--us wrote in #9. I would plead for some kind of rare or archaic marking on the lop = hop about like a rabbit definition. I don't find much evidence for it, and what I did find seems to be at least a century old and (mostly) BE.

#11: I agree with the OP that lope = trotten.

Ich nicht. Wenn ich das hier lese:

lope // v.i. springen; laufen; beschwingten Schrittes gehen
Duden-Oxford - Großwörterbuch Englisch. 2. Aufl. Mannheim 1999. [CD-ROM].

"lope
3. To run with a long, bounding stride. Also with along, away. (Said chiefly of animals.)" (OED)

passt das absolut nicht zu trotten.

langsam, schwerfällig, stumpfsinnig irgendwohin gehen, sich fortbewegen
http://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/trotten

trotten passt besser zu to trot, to traipse, to tootle, to amble

Thanks for responding, Harri. My comment about lope = trotten was sloppy.

I think I was influenced by the pair trotten = to trot. In English trot has more in common with lope than it does with traipse, tootle and amble, but that is a matter for a different wrong entry.

*schubs*

I was looking for what LEO had to say about 'trotten' and came across this.

The consensus was that it was a term once used of rabbits, but as far as any of us can tell, it's now very uncommon.

So is there any way to mark it as rare, or at least uncommon? Or at the very least, add the word 'rabbits' in italics, and maybe a category like hunting or history?