cuts

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of cut.

   The surgeon closed both cuts with a few neat stitches.

   Sharp cuts to funding forced the library to reduce its hours.

   Note

   An ordinary plural that carries the whole range of the noun: wounds and incisions, strokes of a blade, and the butcher's portions that Good Housekeeping's Bride's Cookery Primer (1922) sorts into steaks, chops and cutlets. The same spelling is also the present-tense verb (she cuts the bread), so the sentence decides which is meant. The schoolroom punishment, the cuts, is a separate plural-only use.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of cut.

   The new policy cuts costs across every department.

   A skilled tailor cuts the cloth precisely before sewing.

   Note

   The -s form used after he, she, it or a singular noun: the tailor cuts the cloth. It looks exactly like the plural noun, and the grammar of the sentence tells them apart. Most meanings take a direct object, since someone cuts a cake, cuts a shape, or cuts a horse with a whip. In the self-harm meaning it can stand without one.

3. 3
   noundatedhistoricalAustraliaNew Zealandcountablepluralwith the

   Physical punishment inflicted on a student at school, typically strokes of a cane or strap.

   The schoolmaster gave him several cuts across the palm for answering back.

   My greatest happiness is that Sebastian is having a good time at school and has never been given the cuts.

   2008, Gaynor McGrath, Lemniscate

   Similarstrokes, lashes

   Note

   A schoolroom word from Australia and New Zealand that always takes the article: boys were given the cuts or received the cuts. It belongs to the past. It is dated, or used to describe how schools once disciplined pupils, as in Lyall Ford's Poorhouse to Paradise (2001), where most boys at one school regularly got the cuts. Treat it as a period word, and keep the fixed phrase intact.

   Anyone caught smoking behind the shed was given the cuts.

   He received the cuts twice in his first term.

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