where does it originate from?
jackc2 Fri 30/05/08 14:48
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I may be wrong but isn't it "cut a check" and originates from the tailoring industry?
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One of the old meanings of 'cut' was 'to prepare'. It was certainly used in this way as long ago as the 17th century, in phrases such as 'Cut him some work to do.' That, therefore, seems a likely source.
If you click here a link will take you to a web-page with another possible explanation.
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My apologies...that link does not seem to work any more and it's so long since I last used it that I cannot for the life of me recall what the "other explanation" actually was!
Just stick with the old-time meaning 'prepare'.
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The following may have been the 'other explanation...
I have no idea what the evidence for this is, but there is a suggestion that, in America, the figures to be written on a cheque (or check, as they would call it!) were sometimes written so heavily that they, in effect, ‘tore' the paper. This was supposedly a way of ensuring that they could not be altered.
Another suggestion is that some cheque-books had several cheques printed on single pages. These had to be torn along the perforations in order to remove individual ones. (I have personally never seen such a cheque-book, but they could conceivably exist!)
I still think cut = prepare is the answer.
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This has been asked before. One answer was that it was a reference to a stencil cut (as in early forms of copier). Organisations sending out lots of checks would have them pre-printed with details of the sum payable or with the name of the payee or a printed copy signature. So when the Army, for example, was paying out lots of similar checks it would be said to 'cut a check'.
Must say that QM's answer sounds a lot more likely.It has the advantage of simplicity.We forget that words often had meanings in the past which we no longer give them in general use today. When called upon to explain them , there is a tendency to find some version which closely fits our modern or recent experience, rather than to search for an ancient , plain, straightforward but obsolete definition of the word.
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