cutoff
Pluralcutoffs
Pluralcutoffs
- 1The point at which something ends, or the limit beyond which it does not go.
Shipping is free on any order placed before the 3 p.m. cutoff.
The team finished one win short of the playoff cutoff.
Similardeadline, limit, threshold
Note
The verb cut off turned into a noun, and spelling keeps the two apart: closed up as cutoff, or hyphenated as cut-off, it names the limit (the 3 p.m. cutoff); left open, cut off is the action (orders are cut off at 3). That one compound lies behind every use of the word, from deadlines and valves to shorts made from old trousers.
- 2Serving as a limit, or as the point at which something ends.
The cutoff age for the youth league is fourteen, so Sam will play with the adults next year.
Ballots that arrive after the cutoff hour will not be counted.
- 3Shorts made from a pair of pants whose legs have been cut off.
He showed up to the barbecue in a pair of faded cutoffs and flip-flops.
Every summer she turns a worn-out pair of jeans into cutoffs.
Note
Like shorts and jeans, the word is plural even for a single garment: you own a pair of cutoffs and put them, not it, in the wash. Guy Trebay, writing in The New York Times in 2021, spots a woman crossing Astor Place in "a pair of cutoffs" and sandals, the word's natural company: casual clothes, often homemade from trousers that have outlived their legs.
- 4A halt in a flow of something or in an ongoing activity.
The embargo threatened a cutoff of oil shipments to the region.
After the talks collapsed, the cutoff in contact between the two sides lasted for months.
Similarstoppage, interruption, halt, suspension
- 5The amount set by an operational definition as the point where one category ends and the next begins when a measure is divided into two or more groups.
The study used a cutoff of 25 on the depression scale to separate likely cases from the rest.
The lab reports any result above the cutoff as positive.
Similarthreshold
Note
A researcher's choice rather than a fact of nature: an operational definition fixes the number, so the same scale can be split at different points for different purposes. It goes by several names, cutoff point, cutoff value, threshold value and cutpoint among them. Moving it trades one error for another: shifted one way, it catches more true cases but also flags more people who are well.
- 6A road, path, or channel that offers a shorter or quicker way to get somewhere.
Truckers use the county-road cutoff to avoid the traffic on the interstate.
Boats can save an hour by taking the cutoff instead of following the river's long bend.
Similarshortcut
- 7A shirt without sleeves, especially a T-shirt whose sleeves have been cut off.
He showed up to the pickup game in a faded cutoff that left his shoulders bare.
She cut the sleeves off a concert tee and wore the cutoff to every show that summer.
Note
Unlike the cut-down shorts, this one counts like any other shirt: one cutoff, two cutoffs, with no pair of in front. The name keeps the making in view, since the typical cutoff began life as a T-shirt with sleeves, though any sleeveless shirt can take the word.
- 8A device that interrupts or shuts off the flow of a current.
The space heater's tip-over cutoff kills the current the moment it falls.
An automatic cutoff closes the valve if the flow through the pipe suddenly surges.
Similarshutoff
- 9Describing the score or value that marks the line between having and not having a disease, condition, or similar state.
Children who scored above the cutoff score on the screening questionnaire were referred for a full assessment.
The researchers asked whether the cutoff value for the blood test was too strict for older adults.
Note
Psychology and medicine use it in front of a noun, usually score, value or point, and it takes no more or most. It is the threshold noun put to work as a modifier, so the cutoff score on a screening questionnaire and the cutoff for that questionnaire are the same number.
- 10In poker, the player who acts immediately before the player on the button in the betting before the flop.
Everyone at the table folded to the cutoff, who raised to steal the blinds.
The cutoff called the early raise, and the button reraised behind him.
Note
Poker players use it for the seat as much as the person in it: you raise from the cutoff or sit in the cutoff. With the button it makes up late position, acting after most of the table has already decided, which makes it a favorite place to open with a raise and try to steal the blinds.
- 11A device that saves steam by regulating its entry into the cylinder of an engine.
A worn cutoff was letting too much steam into the cylinder, and the locomotive burned through its coal.
Mill owners paid extra for engines with an adjustable cutoff, since the savings in coal soon covered the cost.
- 12A horizontal line printed across a page to separate one section from another.
The designer dropped a cutoff below the weather box so it would not run into the sports briefs.
Old front pages relied on cutoffs and column rules rather than white space to divide the stories.
Note
Printers call any printed line a rule, and the cutoff is the one laid across the page to close off a story or box, unlike the column rules that run down between columns; its fuller name is cutoff rule. In 1919 The Washington Newspaper set "cutoffs, borders and rules" beside light-face type as the plan of a page with almost no black headlines.
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Origin
A noun formed from the verb phrase cut off.