We say, ‘Cut a fart.’ How did that come to be? Are there other expressions in which we use ‘cut’, where we’re not actually cutting something? I mean, we ‘cut a record’; but that comes from actually cutting grooves into a disc. A film director says, ‘Cut!’ They’re not actually cutting the film, but they’re ‘cutting (stopping) the activity’. ‘He cut to the chase’ is different from ‘He cut a fart’ because the former came from literally cutting a piece of film and splicing the chase scene. But ‘cut a fart’? I’m not seeing where it comes from.
Maybe it’s from the expression “To Cut the Cheese” for flatulence.
You’re letting out gas, then cutting it off?
Actually, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard it phrased that way. Do people actually say, “cut a fart”?
Also, a director calls “Cut” because they used to literally cut the film at the end of a scene.
Yes.
That sounds reasonable. I haven’t used ‘cut the cheese’ since I was a kid, except when I’m literally cutting cheese and I *snerk* about it.
They did when I was a kid, but I can’t remember hearing it at all recently.
I like @Hypno-Toad’s suggestion, but I have no idea if it’s the correct one.
We can “cut and run” as well. It isn’t clear exactly what that means, I always took it to mean somethin akin to a prisioner cutting bindings (rchains) that is holding him and running away.
We “cut classes” in school. We often use “cut off” to mean “terminate” or “end” rather than meaning “sever”.
I think “cut” in relation to flatulence is about the initial release and final terminate process. Cutting the flow.
Ultimately it’s idiom; it doesn’t have to make sense in terms of the literal definitions of the individual words. A vague logical connection is often more than enough.
“Cut the cheese” makes sense. If you cut open or slice off a hunk of pungent cheese, like Limburger, it releases a scent that some might find unpleasant.
I’ve never heard “cut a fart”.
I’ve heard “rip a fart”
(Leslie Neilsen’s tombstone would agree)
Also, you can cut a check.
I don’t know but it doesn’t sound right to me. When we complain about someone cutting a fart, we aren’t complaining that they stopped.
I feel it means you are cutting off whatever activity you are in the middle of doing in order to leave.
I agree that it’s derived from “cut the cheese”. The Historical Dictionary of American Slang defines cut (definition 13) as “to expel intestinal gas” and refers to “cut the cheese” and “cut one’s finger”. The earliest citation for “cut” in this sense is 1967; the earliest citation for “cut the cheese” is 1959 (although there’s a definition of “cheezer” meaning “a strong-smelling fart” from a 1811 dictionary) and the earliest citation for “cut one’s finger” is 1899.
This. Your anus cuts the column of gas coming out of your bowels. You can even control the cutting at will.
You may have answered a related question: In my youth we’d note that so and so “let one.”
That reminds me of the dumb and scatological joke from when I was a kid.
Spoilered because poop.
Why are turds tapered?
So your asshole doesn’t slam shut.
My dad would say, ‘Let wind.’
In college, I was introduced to the term “pinch a loaf” for having a bowel movement
Talented dancers cut a rug, experienced users cut their teeth.
He would know:
A much more common term involving fart cutting is to ‘cut one loose’.
It has the sense of letting something run free or escape, eg when a horse cuts loose from the herd or a boat is unmoored and drifts away.
This usage is very apt for fartage.