[CUT v. 55.]
1. An act of cutting off or portion cut off.
1746. Richardson, Pamela, II. 151. This, though, was a great Cut-off; a whole Week out of ten Days.
2. A new and shorter passage cut by a river through a bend; sometimes also applied to the crescent-shaped lake formed by the remains of the old channel when cut off from the new by silting. Western U.S.
1830. Lyell, Princ. Geol., I. 186. At one spot called the ‘grand cut off,’ vessels now pass from one point to another in half a mile, to a distance which it formerly required twenty miles to reach.
1874. in N. H. Bishop, Voy. Paper Canoe (1878), 223. If you take to the cut-offs, you may get into … interior bayous, from which you will never emerge.
b. A piece of road or railway that cuts off or saves a bend; a short cut, cross-cut.
1881. Chicago Times, 14 May. The Company is … building a cut-off six miles in length near Omaha.
3. An interruption or stopping of a continuance or flow.
1881. T. Stevenson, in Nature, XXIII. 569. Difficulty … of effecting a sharp cut-off on a particular bearing.
b. spec. Steam-engine. An arrangement by which the admission of steam to the cylinder is cut off when the piston has travelled part of the stroke, so that the steam during the remainder of the stroke works expansively; a contrivance for effecting this purpose. Also attrib.
1849. Fairbairn, in Mech. Mag., LI. 258. The space between the cut-off valve and the working cylinder.
1850. Pract. Mech. Jrnl., III. 29. All the requirements of an accurate self-regulating cut-off.
1891. Engineer, 18 Sept. LXII. 229. This valve gear has an unusually large range of cut-off.
c. Applied to various mechanical contrivances for stopping the flow of a liquid, cutting off or closing a connection, and the like.
1874. Knight, Dict. Mech., Cut-off … 2. a valve or gate in a spout, to stop discharge … 3. a device in a rain-water spout to send the falling water in either of two directions.
1886. Pall Mall Gaz., 26 March, 12/1. Cut-off for hydraulic and other engines.
1890. Times, 6 Dec., 15/4. The cut-off is a strong and simple arrangement for bringing the magazine into action or for cutting it off.
d. fig.
1859. Saxe, Poems, Early Rising, ii. Who first invented … That artificial cut-off—Early Rising.
