cut, a dog or horse with a cut or docked tail; hence, a term of abuse applied to a man. ‘Call me cut’, Twelfth Nt. ii. 3. 203 (cp. ‘call me horse’, 1 Hen. IV, ii. 4. 215); London Prodigal, ii. 4. 41. Cut, a common horse, Merry Devil, i. 3. 141; Dauncaster cuttys, Doncaster nags, Skelton, Magnyfycence, 296. See [cut and longtail].
cut: phr. to keep cut, to be coy, to be on one’s best behaviour; ‘Phyllyp, kepe youre cut’, Skelton, P. Sparowe, 119; ‘To keep cut with his mother’, i.e. to be coy like her, to follow her example, Middleton, More Dissemblers, i. 4 (Dondolo). See NED. (s.v. Cut, sb.2 34).
cut and longtail, dogs or horses (or men) of every kind; i.e. those that are docked and those whose tails are allowed to grow. Merry Wives, iii. 4. 44; Two Noble Kinsmen, v. 2. 68.
cut bene whids, to speak good words, speak fair. (Cant.) Fletcher, Beggar’s Bush, ii. 1 (Higgen). See Harman, Caveat, p. 84.
cut over, to pass straight across; ‘Caligula lying in Fraunce . . . intended to cutte over, and invade Englande’, Gosson, School of Abuse, p. 16.
cutchy, a ‘coach-y’; a driver of a coach; ‘Make thee [a] poor Cutchy’ (cp. coach in the preceding line), Return from Parnassus, iii. 4 (Furor).
cute, a cur; ‘Some yelping Cute’, Drayton, Pol. xxiii. 340; explained by ‘a cur’ in the margin. It is probably merely a variant of cut, a short-tailed dog; see [cut and longtail].
cutted, abrupt, snappish, sharp in reply. Middleton, Women beware, iii. 1. 4. Used in this sense in Devon and Cornwall (EDD.).
cutter, a cut-throat, bully, bravo. Beaumont and Fl., Wit at Several Weapons, iii. 1 (Gregory). Hence, title of the play by Cowley, The Cutter of Coleman Street. With a quibble upon cutting, Middleton, Mayor of Queenborough, ii. 3 (Simon).
cutting, swaggering. Greene, Friar Bacon, ii. 2 (516); scene 5. 19 (W.); p. 159, col. 1 (D.).