A short cut, by land or by water.
1818. (Land) They pointed [it] out to him as being a nigh cut-off to the high road.—Boston Weekly Messenger, July 23.
1830. (Water) At one spot, called the “grand cut off,” vessels now pass from one point to another, in half a mile, to a distance which it formerly required twenty miles to reach.—Lyell, ‘Principles of Geology,’ i. 186. (N.E.D.)
1840. (Water) When the Mississippi, in making its ‘cut-offs,’ is ploughing its way through the virgin soil, there float upon the top of this destroying tide thousands of trees, that covered the land, and lined its carving banks.—Knick. Mag., xvi. 462 (Dec.).
1844. (Water) Before Captain Shrieve made the cut-off, no difficulty of navigation existed…. The cut-off made a lake as large in extent as the Mississippi was wide, and caused a sheet of dead water where a rapid current should have been encouraged.—Mr. Barrow of Louisiana in the Senate, Feb. 14: Cong. Globe, p. 275.
1846. (Water) The steamer Nimrod, when at Horse Shoe cut-off, encountered the snag at night.—St. Louis Reveille, March 24.
1847. (Water) A place that had some defects until the river made the ‘cut-off’ at Shirt-tail bend.—T. B. Thorpe, ‘The Big Bear of Arkansas,’ p. 21.
1855. (Water) The formation of ‘cut-offs,’ made by the rushing waters every annual freshet, assisted by some sacrilegious hand, bursting its barriers and seeking some new outlet.—Knick. Mag., xlvi. 595 (Dec.).
1866. (Land) I took it afoot across the country by a settlement road they called the ‘cut-off.’ Devil of a cut-off it was to me.—Charles H. Smith, ‘Bill Arp,’ p. 127.
1875. (Water) In my own time a cut-off was made at American Bend, which shortened the river ten miles or more.—Mark Twain, ‘Old Times on the Mississippi,’ Atlantic Monthly, xxxvi. p. 193/2 (Aug.).
1881. (Land) The Company is building a cut-off six miles in length near Omaha.—Chicago Times, May 14. (N.E.D.)
