"cut", v., sense 33

Ronald Butters ronbutters at AOL.COM
Tue Nov 9 18:44:57 UTC 2010


Yeah, and Shakespeare used "put down" in the sense of "squelched."

On Nov 9, 2010, at 9:27 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> At 11/8/2010 09:53 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
>>
>> On Tue, Oct 26, 2010 at 3:31 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>>
>> > Don't we all think that the OED should include as one of its
>> > quotations for "cut", v., sense 33, the following?
>> >
>> > 'Certainly not,' the Red Queen said, very decidedly: 'it isn't etiquette
>> > to_ cut_ any one you've been introduced to.
>>
>> Well, FWIW, I do. _Cut_, in the sense, "blow someone off, shine
>> someone on, [give someone the] cold(-)shoulder, ig[nore] someone,"
>> etc. has been around for dekkids. Joel's cite is clear evidence of
>> that.
>>
>> BTW, I'm almost as surprised that this particular sense of _cut_ goes
>> back at least as far as Lewis Carroll
>
> A bit longer, Wilson:
>
> 1634 S. R. Noble Soldier II. i, Why shud a Souldier..Be cut thus
> by..a Courtier? 1786 G. COLMAN in Europ. Mag. IX. 370 Some bow, some
> nod, some cut him. 1796 JANE AUSTEN Sense & Sens. xliv. (D.), He had
> cut me ever since my marriage. 1822 HAZLITT Table-t. II. viii. 188 To
> cut an acquaintance..has hardly yet escaped out of the limits of
> slang phraseology. 1826 DISRAELI Viv. Grey I. iv, Any fellow
> voluntarily conversing with an usher was to be cut dead by the whole school.
>
> Joel
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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