DCHP-3

loppy

DCHP-2 (Mar 2014)
adj. — Newfoundland

of the water: rough from wind or storm; choppy.

Type: 2. Preservation — Loppy is an adjective that derives from "lop", a noun used to indicate 'a state of the sea when the waves are short and lumpy' (OED-3, s.v. "lop" n.6). Because a great number of English immigrants settled in Newfoundland and Labrador in the 18th and 19th centuries, the term is almost certainly preserved from British English (EDD, s.v. "loppy"). According to OED-3 (s.v. "lop" n.6), the etymology of loppy might possibly include some onomatopoeic element and could also be related to the verb "lap", as in 'to lap up water from a dish'.
See also DNE, s.v. "loppy".

Quotations

1905
DUNCAN 3 The enviable achievement in his sight was a gunwale load snatched from a loppy sea.
1912
The wind was blowing the coal dust everywhere; this strange spectacle, together with the sounds of the men's voices and the loppy waves against our side, but when the immediate result of the work was of such extreme importance the interest developed with some of us into excitement.
1931
A head wind made quite a loppy sea, but this was not too unpleasant.
1945
We went down to the beach, untied the boat, took an oar each and were soon rowing lazily across the pond, when suddenly the wind came up, the pond became loppy, dark clouds formed overhead and rain followed.
1956
Under this benign influence angling conditions were near ideal, marred only by the rather high breeze. For fanciers of streams and gullies, the relatively small expanse of water rendered this weather variance a minor handicap. But the haunters of ponds found the favourite points and onwind shores just a little too windy and loppy for comfort.
1968
Well, first when we arrived at where the skipper said he had a contraption called a "trap", which is the thing he went out at 3:00 a.m. in the first place to haul, he began to wonder whether or not the wind was too strong, or as the skipper himself was heard to say "whether or not she's too loppy" to go ahead and haul 'er or to go back in and not get any fish at all, which really amounted to the same thing, or so the skipper said.
1978
Go out quite a ways, Breton Cove and back again. And the boys used to scare us, rock the boat. Some days it would be kind of loppy and the girls would scream -- but I was never scared.
1981
And even the last ones that went out on the boat -- it was quite loppy -- there was another little rowboat had to go out with the last people and put them aboard that boat. And it was quite windy.
1998
Shortly before his death, Samuel Taylor made an unexpected trip up the rugged coast of Newfoundland. In the first light of dawn, he departed Bareneed in a trap skiff. Incredibly -- with the use of only a small engine -- he sailed beyond Conception Bay, veering northwest along Fogo, through Notre Dame Bay. He passed Hare Bay, the ragged cut in the tip of the Northern Peninsula, leaving the island behind as he entered the Strait of Belle Isle, an open waterway where the swell of the ocean turned loppy, threatening to capsize his skiff.
2003
First you needed a suitable body of water, particularly the ocean, and it would have to be calm. A stone will not skip very well in rough, loppy water and so on windy days we didn't even bother to try.
2013
Minnie Rachel (Mauger) Pineo was born on August 20th, 1918 in Petites, a little place - an island off the south of Newfoundland. [...] The family did not have much. There was no hot or cold water - not even a hand pump. The only way off the island was to row a boat. Although Minnie worked hard, she enjoyed her years. However, it was seldom she could get anywhere because of the wind and the loppy water.

References