different between scissor vs cutter

English

Etymology

Altered from scissors; ultimately from Latin caedere (“to cut”); current spelling influenced by Latin scindere (“to split”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?s?z?/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /?s?z?/
• Homophone: seizer
• Rhymes: -?z?(?)

Noun

scissor (plural scissors)

1. (rare) One blade on a pair of scissors.
2. (India) Scissors.
3. (noun adjunct) Used in certain noun phrases to denote a thing resembling the action of scissors, as scissor kick, scissor hold (wrestling), scissor jack.

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

scissor (third-person singular simple present scissors, present participle scissoring, simple past and past participle scissored)

1. (transitive) To cut using, or as if using, scissors.
   • 1634, John Fletcher and William Shakespeare, The Two Noble Kinsmen, London: John Waterson, Act I, Scene 2, p. 10,^[1]

     […] let me know,

     Why mine owne Barber is unblest, with him

     My poore Chinne too, for tis not Cizard iust

     To such a Favorites glasse […]

   • 1829, uncredited author, “Letters from London,” No. VIII, The Edinburgh Literary Journal, Volume I, Number 19, 21 March, 1829, p. 267,^[2]

     [The poem] “All for Love” […] was originally intended for the Keepsake—the Editor of which Annual proposed to have it scissored down into genteel dimensions, which the Laureate refused to do […]

   • 1958, Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, New York: Vintage, 1993 Chapter 4, p. 37,^[3]

     Tucked between the pages were Sunday features, together with scissored snippings from gossip columns.

   • 1993, Paul Theroux, Millroy the Magician, New York: Ivy Books, 1995, Chapter 4, p. 29,

     […] Millroy scissored open his pants leg and bandaged his shin.

   • 2008, Toni Morrison, A Mercy, New York: Knopf, p. 48,

     They clipped the beads from her arms and scissored inches from her hair.

2. (transitive) To excise or expunge something from a text.
   • 1955, Lionel Shapiro, The Sixth of June, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Chapter 15,^[4]

     The next line and a half had been scissored out by the censor.

   • 2003, William Gass, “The Shears of the Censor” in Tests of Time, University of Chicago Press, p. 190,

     At one university the navy made me attend, I took out a Chaucer which had lines scissored out […]

3. (transitive, obsolete) To reproduce (text) as an excerpt, copy.
   • 1832, Review of The Etymological Encyclopœdia by D. J. Browne, The New-England Magazine, Volume 3, September, 1832, p. 256,^[5]

     The public are no longer excluded from the beauties of Science, if there is any virtue in 257 pages of etymology, scissored from “the best authorities.”

   • 1881, advertisement for Pattison’s Missouri Digest, 1873, published in The Texas Reports: Cases Adjudged in the Supreme Court, Volume 3, Austin: Gammel-Statesman Publishing,^[6]

     This Digest is the result of a careful reading of every case, and not a mere scissoring of head notes, as is so often done by digesters.

4. (transitive, intransitive) To move something like a pair of scissors, especially the legs.
   • 1938, Raymond Chandler, “The King in Yellow,” Part Three, in The Simple Art of Murder, Houghton Mifflin, 1950,^[7]

     She lay on her side on the floor under the bed, long legs scissored out as if in running.

   • 1969, Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, New York: Bantam, 1971, Chapter 22, p. 140,^[8]

     His jaws were scissoring mechanically on the already mushy sweet potatoes.

   • 1978, Edmund White, Nocturnes for the King of Naples, Penguin, 1980, Chapter 5, p. 67,^[9]

     […] I stand on tiptoe, lift a shade and see a pair of nyloned legs scissoring through a cold, wet, metropolitan afternoon.

   • 1989, Guy Vanderhaeghe, Homesick, New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1990, Chapter 9, p. 139,^[10]

     She’s got her arms locked around his belly and her legs scissored around his shins […]

5. (intransitive, sex) To engage in scissoring (tribadism), a sexual act in which two women intertwine their legs and rub their vulvas against each other.
6. (skating) To skate with one foot significantly in front of the other.

Alternative forms

• scissors (rare)

Derived terms

• unscissored

Translations

Latin

Etymology

From scissus +? -or.

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /?skis.sor/, [?s?k?s???r]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /??is.sor/, [??is??r]

Noun

scissor m (genitive sciss?ris); third declension

1. trancheur, somebody who in a banquet cuts the foodstuffs
2. a kind of gladiator
   • 1^st century B.C.E., Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum IX 466, which is a list of gladiators of the lanista Gaius Salvius Capito in Venusia

3. (Medieval Latin) tailor
4. (Medieval Latin) carver

Declension

Third-declension noun.

English

Etymology

cut +? -er

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /?k?t?/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?k?t?/
• Rhymes: -?t?(?)

Noun

cutter (plural cutters)

1. A person or device that cuts (in various senses).
   • 1982, The Movies (page 288)

     The intervening years, however, were spent as a cutter. He was, indeed, one of the best film editors in the business, winning an Academy Award for Body and Soul (1947).

   • 1988, Jorge Amado, Home is the Sailor (page 55)

     Chico Pacheco kept repeating the phrase between clenched teeth, lamenting the wasted days of his youth; he had been a notorious cutter of classes.

2. (nautical) A single-masted, fore-and-aft rigged, sailing vessel with at least two headsails, and a mast set further aft than that of a sloop.
3. A foretooth; an incisor.
4. A heavy-duty motor boat for official use.

5. (nautical) A ship's boat, used for transport ship-to-ship or ship-to-shore.
6. (cricket) A ball that moves sideways in the air, or off the pitch, because it has been cut.
7. (baseball) A cut fastball.
8. (slang) A ten-pence piece. So named because it is the coin most often sharpened by prison inmates to use as a weapon.
9. (slang) A person who practices self-injury.
10. (medicine, colloquial, slang, humorous or derogatory) A surgeon.

    Synonym: slasher

11. An animal yielding inferior meat, with little or no external fat and marbling.

    Coordinate terms: canner, darkcutter

    • 1905, United States. Bureau of Corporations, Report of the Commissioner of Corporations on the Beef Industry (page 89)

      Bulls and cows used for breeding, when finally sent to market, are inferior for dressed-beef production. Bulls are demanded especially for sausage and similar products. Cows are largely used as cutters and canners […]

12. (obsolete) An officer in the exchequer who notes by cutting on the tallies the sums paid.
13. (obsolete) A ruffian; a bravo; a destroyer.
    • Martin Parker, A True Tale of Robin Hood

      So being outlaw'd (as 'tis told), / He with a crew went forth / Of lusty cutters, bold and strong, / And robbed in the north.

    • 1633, A Match at Midnight (disputed authorship)

      He's out of cash, and thou know'st by cutter's law, / We are bound to relieve one another.

14. (obsolete) A kind of soft yellow brick, easily cut, and used for facework.
15. A light sleigh drawn by one horse.
    • 2007, Carrie A. Meyer, Days on the Family Farm, U of Minnesota Press, page 55 [1]:

      Throughout much of the winter, the sled or the cutter was the vehicle of choice. Emily and Joseph had a cutter, for traveling in style in snow.

Derived terms

• cane cutter
• copy cutter
• glass cutter
• wire cutters
• revenue cutter

Translations

French

Noun

cutter m (plural cutters)

1. cutter, boxcutter, utility knife, Stanley knife
2. (nautical) cutter (vessel)