Cut one's name

[Dan Goncharoff]

An example from 1900:

"There were names on the limestone, cut by hands now feeble in old age or
dead and in their graves, and over them all was one name—a name once mighty
to charm the soul of youth to high endeavor—it was the name of Washington.
"I will climb," said the boy, setting his teeth, "above that name, and I
will cut my own higher than his." He reads of that youth, with a swelling
heart, and whether it be through starvation and penury, or whether on the
gilded rounds of the ladder which his friends have raised for him he feels
that he, too, can climb and must climb, and he wills to cut his name high
up beside the undying records of the great men gone before."

Pacific monthly: Volumes 1-3 - Page 132
"An American Ideal"
Chas. H. Chapman PhD
President of the University of Oregon

DanG


On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 7:54 AM, Dave Wilton <dave at wilton.net> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Dave Wilton <dave at WILTON.NET>
> Subject:      Cut one's name
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> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Saw an odd phrase this morning on OUP's blog, which I guess makes it
> British
> but probably still of interest to the list. "Cut one's name" meaning "built
> one's reputation." I've never seen, or at least noticed, this construction
> before. A quick Google search turns up nothing but literal references to
> carving one's name in trees or other objects. (Although other examples may
> be buried in there somewhere.)
>
> "This is the context in which Alan Turing cut his name as a cryptographer
> during the Second World War."
>
> http://blog.oup.com/2012/06/alan-turing-cryptographic-legacy/
>
> --Dave Wilton
>  dave at wilton.net
>
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