(American), or cut one’s stick, lucky, etc., verbal phr. (common).—To make off; to escape. TO CUT DIRT is clearly an allusion to the throwing up of mud and dust by a horse’s hoofs in fast trotting. Originally, TO CUT ONE’S STICK refers to the cutting of a staff from a hedge or tree on the occasion of a journey. CUT OVER and CUT AWAY, though vulgarly colloquial in the nineteenth, were in literary use in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A curious and noteworthy parallel is found in Zechariah xi. 10, where the ‘cutting of a stick’ is described as the symbol of breaking a friendly covenant. CUT ONE’S STICK is sometimes elaborated into AMPUTATE ONE’S MAHOGANY (q.v.). CUT ONE’S LUCKY is a simple reference to a ‘lucky’ escape. A Latin equivalent of CUT ONE’S STICK is to be found in Juvenal’s Collige sarcinulas (‘collect the bags’). For synonyms, see AMPUTATE. TO CUT ONE’S LUCKY also signifies to die.
1829. Negro Song [quoted in A Dictionary of Slang, Jargon & Cant, p. 287].
| He jump up fo’ sartin—he CUT DIRT and run, | |
| While Sambo follow arter wid his ‘tum, tum, tum.’ |
1836. DICKENS, Pickwick Papers (about 1827), p. 79 (ed. 1857). Hold still, sir: wot’s the use o’ runnin’ arter a man as has MADE HIS LUCKY, and got to t’other end of the borough by this time.
1840. DICKENS, The Old Curiosity Shop, ch. xl. ‘And now that the nag has got his wind again,’ said Mr. Chuckster, rising in a graceful manner, ‘I’m afraid I must CUT MY STICK.’
1841. Punch, vol. I., p. 136. He [James II.] is the only English sovereign who may be said to have amputated his bludgeon, which, if we were speaking of an ordinary man and not a monarch, we should have rendered by the familiar phrase of CUT HIS STICK.
1841. The Comic Almanack, p. 278. As sune as ve arived at the sumat had a Werry hextensif vew off Prinse lewy a CUTTIN HIS UNLUKKY, folowd by his folowers at Hi pressure spede.
1843. THACKERAY, Lyra Hibernica, ‘The Battle of Limerick.’
| But the best use Tommy made | |
| Of his famous battle blade | |
| Was to CUT HIS OWN STICK from the Shannon shore. |
1851–61. H. MAYHEW, London Labour and the London Poor, vol. I., p. 150. A man got me to go for some in a orchard, and told me how to manage; but I CUT MY LUCKY in a minute.
1853. Western Scenes. Now you CUT DIRT, and don’t let me see you here again for a coon’s age, you hear?
1855. J. RICHARDSON, Recollections of Last Half Century, vol. II., p. 172. In less than half an hour he swallowed the whole undiluted contents of the bottle, and having done so CUT HIS LUCKY, and retired.
ante 1871. Border Adventures, p. 231. Now, I say, old hoss, if you don’t hurry up and CUT DIRT like streak-lightnin’, this child goes arter you, and you look out for a windin’ sheet, you hear?
1880. Punch’s Almanack, p. 3.
