DCHP-1 Online

cut

• 1 † n. a way cut through rock or gravel in building a road, canal, or railway.

  • 1826  . . . the slopes of the Deep Cut above the tow-path, are at an angle of 45'.
  • 1961  Materials from the cuts were pushed . . . in cars over a track of poles to build adjacent embankments

• 2 n. a natural gully or ravine, serving as a pass.

  • 1905  (1954)  What struck me most was the "cut" of the Peace river through the Rocky mountains, which, as to its main range, narrows in that quarter.
  • 1965  Late that afternoon we came to the top of the Peace River cut. When I saw the steepness of the road as it zig-zagged down the hillside, l demanded to be lifted out of the sleigh.

• 3 † n. the amount of timber cut in one season.

  • 1901  Dan Murphy was mightily pleased with himself and with the bit of the world about him, for there lay his winter's cut of logs in the river below him snug and secure and held tight by a boom across the mouth, just where it flowed into the Nation.
  • 1957  To provide therefore for an annual cut of say 25,000 cords, would mean an initial capital investment of over half a million dollars. . . .

• 4 n. a holding of timber for lumbering purposes.

  • 1883  And if he is an honest man . . . let him go to the merchant . . . and make an open bargain with him, either for a job, or to buy a "cut," or purchase out and out the whole lot for a stated sum. . . .
  • 1895  (1929)  They never knew the direction from which he might come--an ignorance which kept them all busy with axe, saw, cant-hook and horses over the two square miles of forest comprising his "cut.

• 5 n. Sealing See 1933 quote at patch (def. 2).

  See also: patch (def. 2)