come a cropper

Possibly from the phrase neck and crop, in which crop may refer to the backside of a horse.

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come a cropper (third-person singular simple present comes a cropper, present participle coming a cropper, simple past came a cropper, past participle come a cropper)

1. (originally) To fall headlong from a horse.
2. (Britain, idiomatic) To suffer some accident or misfortune; to fail.

   She came a cropper on the stairs and broke her leg.

   • 1879, Anthony Trollope, chapter 67, in The Duke's Children:

     I should feel certain that I should come a cropper, but still I'd try it. As you say, a fellow should try.

   • 1922, Katherine Mansfield, At The Bay‎:

     You couldn't help feeling he'd be caught out one day, and then what an almighty cropper he'd come!

• neck and crop

• “Come a cropper” in Michael Quinion, Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds: Ingenious Tales of Words and Their Origins, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books in association with Penguin Books, 2004, →ISBN.