[Pa. pple. of CUT v.]
1. Gashed or wounded with a sharp-edged instrument; having an incision made in it.
c. 1665. Mrs. Hutchinson, Mem. Col. Hutchinson (1838), 47/1. To bind up a cut finger.
1889. V. Horsley, in F. Treves, Man. Surgery (ed. 6), II. xi. 473. The ordinary cut throat of the suicide or homicide.
b. esp. Of clothes, etc.: Having the edges or other parts purposely indented or slashed, for ornament or as a fashion.
1480. Caxton, Chron. Eng., ccxxvi. 233. Short clothes and streyte wastyd dagged and kyt, and on euery syde slatered.
1528. Tindale, Parable Wicked Mammon, Wks. I. 103. In a visor, in a disguised garment, and a cut shoe.
1573. G. Harvey, Letter-bk. (Camden), 6. His kut dublets.
a. 1627. Middleton, Mayor of Q., V. i. You’d both need wear cut clothes.
1678. Lond. Gaz., No. 1273/4. Another Apron laced with cut and slash Lace.
c. Of leaves and other natural objects: Having the margins deeply indented and divided.
1565–73. Cooper, Thesaurus, Alcea … marsh mallow: or cut mallow.
1591. Percivall, Sp. Dict., Malvavisco salvage cut mallowes.
1796. Withering, Brit. Plants, IV. 38. Leaves small, cut, hoary.
1867. Babington, Man. Brit. Bot. (ed. 6), 160. Ovate cut or pinnatifid leaflets.
2. That has been subjected to cutting; affected or modified by cutting.
1588. Shaks., Tit. A., II. i. 87. Easie it is Of a cut loafe to steale a shiue we know.
1803. Sporting Mag., XXI. 326. Cut-cards … cards … having the good cards … all cut shorter, and the bad ones cut something narrower.
1881. Daily News, 1 Sept., 3/3. In the Bank of England…, buyers having now to choose between … Napoleons and German 20 marks at 76s. 61/2d., and cut sovereigns at 77s. 101/2d.
1892. Pall Mall Gaz., 5 Aug., 3/1. Cut cloth is canvas painted, from which the carpenters cut away all portions which are not touched with paint.
3. Formed, shaped, fashioned or made by cutting; having the surface shaped or ornamented by grinding and polishing, as cut glass. Cut velvet: velvet having the pile cut so as to form patterns. † Cut river: a canal.
1677. Yarranton, Eng. Improv., 7. By making Cut Rivers Navigable in all places where Art can possibly effect it.
1717. Berkeley, Tour in Italy, Wks. IV. 515. The gardens have fine cut walks.
1816. Keatinge, Trav. (1817), II. 81. The masonry is, as usual with the Romans, stratified in alternate courses of cut-stone and brick-work.
1840. Thackeray, Catherine, viii. The cut-velvet breeches.
1845. C. Knight, Capital & Labour, 169. Cut-glass is now comparatively … cheap.
1874. Knight, Dict. Mech., Cut-nail, a nail cut from a nail-plate, in contradistinction to one forged from a nail-rod.
4. Divided into pieces by cutting.
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 111. Cutte a-sundere, scissus.
1659. Lovelace, Poems (1864), 166.
| Then let me be | |
| Thy cut anatomie. |
1840. F. D. Bennett, Whaling Voy., II. 85. Enclosing the cut leaf in the delicate husk of the Indian-corn.
1847–78. Halliwell, Cut-meat, hay; fodder; chaff cut into short lengths. North.
Mod. A heap of cut fire-wood.
5. Severed or detached by cutting; lopped off.
c. 1380. Wyclif, Serm., Sel. Wks. I. 167. A kitt braunche.
1845. Florist’s Jrnl., 13. The unhealthiness attributed to cut flowers, when introduced into … sleeping-rooms.
1878. Emerson, in N. Amer. Rev., CXXVI. 405. The attempt to detach and blazon the thought is like a show of cut-flowers.
6. Shortened, lessened, or reduced by, or as by cutting; curtailed; cut down.
1646. Crashaw, Steps to Temple, 54. Short-cut lives of murder’d infants.
1881. Chicago Times, 12 March. The New York Central … has been meeting the cut rate made via Baltimore.
1884. Pall Mall Gaz., 1 Oct., 5/2. Parliament will accept with composure the cutting of the coupon, but the guarantee of the cut coupon—that is altogether another affair.
7. Castrated.
1624. Nero, IV. i. (1888), 56. Your cut-boy Sporus.
Mod. A cut horse.
8. slang. Drunk, intoxicated.
1673. R. Head, Canting Acad., 171. He is flaw’d, fluster’d, Cup shot, cut in the leg or back.
a. 1700. B. E., Dict. Cant. Crew, Cut, Drunk; Deep Cut … Cut in the Leg or Back, very drunk.
1760. C. Johnston, Chrysal (1822), I. 134. Your excellency was a little cut, but you broke up much the strongest of the company.
1823. Lockhart, Reg. Dalton, I. vii. (1842), 36. I’m sure we had not much more than a bottle apiece … I was not cut.
1848. Thackeray, Bk. Snobs, xlviii. I was so cut last night.
† 9. Cut and long tail: lit. horses or dogs with cut tails and with long tails; hence fig. all sorts of people. Obs.
1575. Laneham, Lett. (1871), 25. The rest of the band … tag and rag, cut & long tail.
1579. Fulwell, Ars Adulandi, I. Yea, even their very dogs, Rug, Rig, and Risbie, yea, cut and long-taile, they shall be welcome.
1598. Shaks., Merry W., III. iv. 47. I that I will, come cut and long-taile, vnder the degree of a ’Squire.
1698. Vanbrugh, Æsop, IV. ii. Your worship has six coach-horses (cut and long-tail) two runners, half-a-dozen hunters.
1699. Farquhar, Constant Couple, II. iv. I whipped all the whores, cut and long tail, out of the parish.
10. Cut and dried (also cut and dry): originally referring to herbs in the herbalists’ shops, as contrasted with growing herbs; hence, fig. ready-made and void of freshness and spontaneity; also, ready shaped according to a priori formal notions. (Usually of language, ideas, schemes or the like.)
1710. J. B., Lett. to Sacheverell, 13. Your Sermon was ready Cut and Dry’d.
1730. Swift, Poems, Betty the Grizette. Sets of Phrases, cut and dry, Evermore thy Tongue supply.
1796. Wolcott (P. Pindar), A Satire, Wks. 1812, III. 408. Phrases ready cut and dried.
1883. St. James’ Gaz., 1 Dec., 3/1. A Socialist, but a Socialist who has no cut-and-dry scheme of Socialism.
1887. Jessopp, Arcady, vii. 191. Six years have been quite enough to scatter my cut and dried theories to the winds.
b. ellipt. as sb. (cut and dry) = cut and dried tobacco, etc.
1725. Ramsay, Gentle Sheph., I. i. Ye’ve coft a pund o cut and dry.
a. 1735. Arbuthnot, Misc. Wks. (1751), II. 123. Isaac extolls her out of a Quartern of Cut and Dry every day she lives.
c. Hence Cut-and-driedness. nonce-wd.
1882. Saintsbury, Short Hist. French Lit., Interchapter iv. 504. The reduction of … important departments in literature to a condition of cut-and-driedness which has no parallel in history.
1799. G. Smith, Laboratory, I. 40. Behind the cut-out letters is pasted oil paper, of various colours, which, when the lamps are lighted, has a fine effect.
1809. Naval Chron., XXII. 90. The Regulus, a cut down 44.
1823. G. S. Faber, Dispensations (1849), II. 104. Like a cut-down plant.
1861. Dickens, Gt. Expect., xxxv. A cut-up plum-cake.
1874. Knight, Dict. Mech., Cut-in Notes (Printing), notes which occupy spaces taken out of the text, whose lines are shortened to give room therefor.
12. Comb., a. qualifying a sb., as † cut-fowl = insect; cut-rock (see quot. 1837); b. similar combinations used attrib., as cut-finger, cut-pile, cut-tail (also = ‘cut-tail dog’); c. parasynthetic derivatives of these as cut-fingered, -leaved, -lugged (Sc. = crop-eared), -nosed (= slit-nosed), -tailed, etc. See also CUT-LIPS, CUT-WAIST, etc.
1883. Jefferies, Nature near London, 44. [They] call the foliage of the knotted figwort *cutfinger leaves, as they are believed to assist the cure of a cut or sore.
1591. Nashe, Introd. Sidney’s Astr. & Stella. ’Tis as good to go in *cut-fingered pumps as cork shoes, if one wear Cornish diamonds on his toes.
1587. Golding, De Mornay, ix. 124. Smal things, as Woorms, *Cutfoules, and such other.
1870. Hooker, Stud. Flora, 174. The *‘Cut-leaved Elder.’
1814. Scott, Wav., xxx. Ye *cut-lugged, graning carles!
1591. Percivall, Sp. Dict., Desnarigado, *cut nosed.
1880. Sir E. J. Reed, Japan, II. 223. Silk and *cut-pile fabrics.
1837. W. Irving, Capt. Bonneville, II. 200. All these basaltic channels are called *cut rocks by the trappers.
1851. Mayne Reid, Scalp Hunt., xxxi. We found the path strewed with loose cut-rock.
1530. Palsgr., 211/2. *Cuttayled beest, queve courte.
1627. Drayton, Agincourt, etc. 143. His gamesome cut-tayld Curre. Ibid., 152. Whistles Cut-tayle from his play.
1712. Lond. Gaz., No. 4997/4. A Bay Mare … cut Tail’d.
