different between whack vs cut

English

Etymology

Uncertain. Originally Scottish. Probably onomatopoeic, although possibly a variant of thwack.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /wæk/
• (without the wine–whine merger) IPA^(key): /?æk/
• Rhymes: -æk
• Homophone: wack (accents with the wine-whine merger)

Noun

whack (plural whacks)

1. The sound of a heavy strike.
2. The strike itself.
3. The stroke itself, regardless of its successful impact.
4. (US, slang) An attempt, a chance, a turn, a go, originally an attempt to beat someone or something.

   C'mon. Take a whack at it.

   40 bucks a whack.

5. (originally Britain cant, dated) A share, a portion, especially a full share or large portion.
   • 1906, Jack London, White Fang, New York: Grosset and Dunlap, Part 1, Chapter 2, p. 16,^[1]

     “It’s damned tame, whatever it is, comin’ in here at feedin’ time an’ gettin’ its whack of fish.”

   • 1938, Xavier Herbert, Capricornia, New York: Appleton, Chapter VII, page 108,^[2]

     “ […] O'Cannon's a taxpayer. He pays his whack towards the upkeep of the State School up in town—”

   • 1951, Katherine Mansfield, Letters to John Middleton Murry, 1913-1922,

     For one thing I had a splendid supper when I got on board—a whack of cold, lean beef and pighells, bread, butter ad lib., tea, and plenty of good bread.

   • 2014, Anthony Pritchard, Grand Prix Ferrari (page 203)

     There were problems over the installation of the engine and the handling. The team had paid top whack for the two Coopers, but the company gave them no help at all.

6. (obsolete) A whack-up: a division of an amount into separate whacks, a divvying up.
7. (US, obsolete) A deal, an agreement.
   • 1876, Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Ch. vi, page 70:

     "I'll stay if you will."
     "Good—that's a whack."

   It's a whack!

8. (typography, computing, slang) The backslash, ??\??.

   del c:\docs\readme.txt

   Delete c colon whack docs whack readme dot text.

Derived terms

• full whack
• have a whack at
• out of whack
• take a whack at
• top whack
• wacky
• whack up, whack-up

Translations

Verb

whack (third-person singular simple present whacks, present participle whacking, simple past and past participle whacked)

1. To hit, slap or strike.
   • G. W. Cable

     Rodsmen were whacking their way through willow brakes.

2. (slang) To kill, bump off.
3. (transitive, slang) To share or parcel out (often with up).

   to whack the spoils of a robbery

   • 1851, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, London: G. Newbold, Volume 2, p. 152,

     When the sewer-hunters consider they have searched long enough […] the gang […] count out the money they have picked up, and proceed to dispose of the old metal, bones, rope, &c.; this done, they then, as they term it, “whack” the whole lot; that is, they divide it equally among all hands.

4. (sports) To beat convincingly; to thrash.
   • 2012, Ryan Pyette, Majors, Panthers play mind games, The London Free Press:

     The fidgety Majors were whacked 9-1 by the Kitchener Panthers at Couch and now trail their rivals 2-0 in an increasingly uncomfortable best-of-seven Intercounty Baseball League first-round series.

5. (Britain, chiefly in the negative) To surpass; to better.
   • 2012, Steve Cullen, Total Flyfisher:

     Recently I was over in Ireland, I love the place, proper fishing, can't whack it!

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:kill

Derived terms

• whack off
• whack the illy

Translations

Adjective

whack (comparative whacker, superlative whackest)

1. Alternative form of wack (“crazy”)

   That's whack, yo!

   • 2007, Joyce E. Davis, Can't Stop The Shine, page 51:

     As they joked about the big butts on female celebrities and what rappers had the whackest lyrics, Malcolm paid little attention to Kalia besides squeezing her hand or grabbing her arm to hold himself up […]

References

• Oxford English Dictionary, 1st ed. "whack, n." Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1923.

English

Etymology

From Middle English cutten, kitten, kytten, ketten (“to cut”) (compare Scots kut, kit (“to cut”)), of North Germanic origin, from Old Norse kytja, kutta, from Proto-Germanic *kutjan?, *kuttan? (“to cut”), of uncertain origin, perhaps related to Proto-Germanic *kwetw? (“meat, flesh”) (compare Old Norse kvett (“meat”)). Akin to Middle Swedish kotta (“to cut or carve with a knife”) (compare dialectal Swedish kåta, kuta (“to cut or chip with a knife”), Swedish kuta, kytti (“a knife”)), Norwegian kutte (“to cut”), Icelandic kuta (“to cut with a knife”), Old Norse kuti (“small knife”), Norwegian kyttel, kytel, kjutul (“pointed slip of wood used to strip bark”).

Displaced native Middle English snithen (from Old English sn?þan; compare German schneiden), which still survives in some dialects as snithe.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /k?t/
• Rhymes: -?t

Verb

cut (third-person singular simple present cuts, present participle cutting, simple past and past participle cut)

1. (transitive) To incise, to cut into the surface of something.
   1. To perform an incision on, for example with a knife.
   2. To divide with a knife, scissors, or another sharp instrument.
   3. To form or shape by cutting.
   4. (slang) To wound with a knife.
      • 1990, Stephen Dobyns, The house on Alexandrine

        We don't want your money no more. We just going to cut you.

   5. (intransitive) To engage in self-harm by making cuts in one's own skin.

      The patient said she had been cutting since the age of thirteen.

   6. To deliver a stroke with a whip or like instrument to.

      • “My Continental prominence is improving,” I commented dryly. ¶ Von Lindowe cut at a furze bush with his silver-mounted rattan. ¶ “Quite so,” he said as dryly, his hand at his mustache. “I may say if your intentions were known your life would not be worth a curse.”

   7. To wound or hurt deeply the sensibilities of; to pierce.
      • 1829, Elijah Hoole, Personal Narrative of a Mission to the South of India, from 1820 to 1828

        she feared she should laugh to hear an European preach in Tamul , but on the contrary , was cut to the heart by what she heard

   8. To castrate or geld.

   9. To interfere, as a horse; to strike one foot against the opposite foot or ankle in using the legs.
2. (intransitive) To admit of incision or severance; to yield to a cutting instrument.
   • 1858, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, The Deacon's Masterpiece, in Chapter XI:

     The panels of white-wood that cuts like cheese, / But lasts like iron for things like these;

3. (transitive, social) To separate, remove, reject or reduce.
   1. To separate or omit, in a situation where one was previously associated.

   2. To abridge or shorten a work; to remove a portion of a recording during editing.
   3. To reduce, especially intentionally.
   4. To absent oneself from (a class, an appointment, etc.).
      • 1833, Thomas Hamilton, Men and Manners in America

        An English tradesman is always solicitous to cut the shop whenever he can do so with impunity.

   5. To ignore as a social snub.
      • 1903, Samuel Barber, The Way of All Flesh, ch 73:

        At first it had been very painful to him to meet any of his old friends, [...] but this soon passed; either they cut him, or he cut them; it was not nice being cut for the first time or two, but after that, it became rather pleasant than not [...] The ordeal is a painful one, but if a man's moral and intellectual constitution are naturally sound, there is nothing which will give him so much strength of character as having been well cut.

4. (intransitive, film) To make an abrupt transition from one scene or image to another.

   The camera then cut to the woman on the front row who was clearly overcome and crying tears of joy.

5. (transitive, film) To edit a film by selecting takes from original footage.
6. (transitive, computing) To remove (text, a picture, etc.) and place in memory in order to paste at a later time.

7. (intransitive) To enter a queue in the wrong place.

8. (intransitive) To intersect or cross in such a way as to divide in half or nearly so.
9. (transitive, cricket) To make the ball spin sideways by running one's fingers down the side of the ball while bowling it. (Can we add an example for this sense?)
10. (transitive, cricket) To deflect (a bowled ball) to the off, with a chopping movement of the bat.
11. (intransitive) To change direction suddenly.

12. (transitive, intransitive) To divide a pack of playing cards into two.

13. (transitive, slang) To write.

14. (transitive, slang) To dilute or adulterate something, especially a recreational drug.

15. (transitive) To exhibit (a quality).
16. (transitive) To stop, disengage, or cease.

    Synonym: cut out

17. (sports) To drive (a ball) to one side, as by (in billiards or croquet) hitting it fine with another ball, or (in tennis) striking it with the racket inclined.
18. (bodybuilding) To lose body mass after bulking, aiming to keep the additional muscle but lose the fat.
19. To perform (a dancing movement etc.).

    to cut a caper

Synonyms

• See Thesaurus:cut

Troponyms

• chop, hack, slice, trim

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

See also

• copy
• paste

Adjective

cut (comparative more cut, superlative most cut)

1. (participial adjective) Having been cut.
2. Reduced.

3. (of a gem) Carved into a shape; not raw.
4. (Can we clean up⁽⁺⁾ this sense?) (cricket, of a shot) Played with a horizontal bat to hit the ball backward of point.
5. (bodybuilding) Having muscular definition in which individual groups of muscle fibers stand out among larger muscles.
   • 1988, Steve Holman, "Christian Conquers Columbus", Ironman 47 (6): 28-34.

     Or how 'bout Shane DiMora? Could he possibly get rip-roaring cut this time around?

   • 2010, Bill Geiger, "6-pack Abs in 9 Weeks", Reps! 17:106

     That's the premise of the overload principle, and it must be applied, even to ab training, if you're going to develop a cut, ripped midsection.

6. (informal) Circumcised or having been the subject of female genital mutilation.
7. (Australia, New Zealand, slang) Emotionally hurt.
8. (slang, New Zealand, formerly Britain) Intoxicated as a result of drugs or alcohol.

Synonyms

• (intoxicated): See Thesaurus:drunk

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

Noun

cut (countable and uncountable, plural cuts)

1. The act of cutting.

2. The result of cutting.

3. An opening resulting from cutting; an incision or wound.

4. A notch, passage, or channel made by cutting or digging; a furrow; a groove.

   • which great cut or ditch Sesostris […] purposed to have made a great deale wider and deeper.

   1. An artificial navigation as distinguished from a navigable river
5. A share or portion.

6. (cricket) A batsman's shot played with a swinging motion of the bat, to hit the ball backward of point.
7. (cricket) Sideways movement of the ball through the air caused by a fast bowler imparting spin to the ball.
8. (sports) In lawn tennis, etc., a slanting stroke causing the ball to spin and bound irregularly; also, the spin thus given to the ball.
9. (golf) In a strokeplay competition, the early elimination of those players who have not then attained a preannounced score, so that the rest of the competition is less pressed for time and more entertaining for spectators.
10. (theater) A passage omitted or to be omitted from a play.

11. (film) A particular version or edit of a film.
12. (card games) The act or right of dividing a deck of playing cards.

13. (card games) The card obtained by dividing the pack.
14. The manner or style a garment etc. is fashioned in.
15. A slab, especially of meat.

16. (fencing) An attack made with a chopping motion of the blade, landing with its edge or point.
17. A deliberate snub, typically a refusal to return a bow or other acknowledgement of acquaintance.
    • 1819, Washington Irving, (Rip Van Winkle):

      Rip called him by name, but the cur snarled, showed his teeth, and passed on. This was an unkind cut indeed.

18. An unkind act; a cruelty.
19. A definable part, such as an individual song, of a recording, particularly of commercial records, audio tapes, CDs, etc.

20. (archaeology) A truncation, a context that represents a moment in time when other archaeological deposits were removed for the creation of some feature such as a ditch or pit.
21. A haircut.
22. (graph theory) The partition of a graph’s vertices into two subgroups.
23. (rail transport) A string of railway cars coupled together, shorter than a train.
24. An engraved block or plate; the impression from such an engraving.

25. (obsolete) A common workhorse; a gelding.
26. (slang, dated) The failure of a college officer or student to be present at any appointed exercise.
27. A skein of yarn.

    (Can we find and add a quotation of Wright to this entry?)

28. (slang, uncountable) That which is used to dilute or adulterate a recreational drug.

29. (fashion) A notch shaved into an eyebrow.
30. (bodybuilding) A time period when one tries to lose fat while retaining muscle mass.
31. (slang) A hidden or secure place.

Derived terms

Translations

Interjection

cut!

1. (film and television) An instruction to cease recording.

   Antonym: action

Anagrams

• TUC, UCT, UTC

Irish

Noun

cut m (genitive singular cuit, nominative plural cuit)

1. Cois Fharraige form of cat (“cat”)

Declension

Mutation

Further reading

• "cut" in Foclóir Gaeilge–Béarla, An Gúm, 1977, by Niall Ó Dónaill.

Kiput

Etymology

From Proto-North Sarawak *likud, from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *likud.

Noun

cut

1. back (the rear of body)

Lower Sorbian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /t?sut/

Verb

cut

1. supine of cu?

Welsh

Pronunciation

• (North Wales) IPA^(key): /k??t/
• (South Wales) IPA^(key): /k?t/

Etymology 1

Borrowed from Middle English [Term?], from Old Northern French cot, cote (“hut, cottage”).

Noun

cut m (plural cutiau)

1. hut, shed; cottage, hovel; pen, coop; cage

Derived terms

Etymology 2

Noun

cut m (plural cutiaid)

1. Alternative form of cud (“kite”)

Mutation

References

• R. J. Thomas, G. A. Bevan, P. J. Donovan, A. Hawke et al., editors (1950–present) , “cut”, in Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru Online (in Welsh), University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh & Celtic Studies