[Ads-l] Antedating "cut the mustard"

[Andy Bach]

>Also not to be confused with “cut the cheese”.

Maybe if it was "Munster" ... not the phony U.S. Muenster cheese.

On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 3:03 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>
> > On Jun 17, 2019, at 4:00 PM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 3:45 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> > wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> In connection with the various early uses of “cut the mustard”, there’s an
> >> etymythology that might could be worth mentioning, namely that the phrase
> >> is a “corruption” of “cut the muster”. See, for example,
> >> https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Talk:cut_the_muster
> >>
> >> As usual, there’s no actual evidence for “cut (the) muster" actually
> >> appearing independent of the etymythological story, and most sources
> >> explain that it comes from a confusion or blending of “cut the mustard” +
> >> “pass muster”, e.g.
> >> https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/passing-muster-and-mustard
> >
> >
> > It's good to see the M-W usage note also covers the eggcorn (or idiom
> > blend) "pass mustard," which was entered into the ECDB by Arnold Z. in '05:
> >
> > https://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/260/pass-mustard/
> >
>
> Also not to be confused with “cut the cheese”.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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a

Andy Bach,
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org