September 8, 2000

a cut above (and high on the hog)

What is the origin of the phrase a cut above? Is it in any way related to high on the hog?

A cut above means 'a level or grade above; superior to'. The cut in the phrase derives from the sense 'shape' or 'style; fashion; appearance'. The original and literal meaning was 'the result of cutting', as with a sharp instrument. You can see the logic of the transition from actual cutting to appearance in citations like Shakespeare's "With eyes seuere, and beard of formall cut" (As You Like It, 1600), or this 1805 citation from Naval Chronicles: "From the cut of her sails an enemy." (This also explains where the phrase "The cut of one's jib" comes from.)

A cut above can serve as a direct comparison, as in this bit of nineteenth-century fiction from the journal Southern Literary Messenger: "Brother Skinner was a stout, likely young man. He had been stationed twelve months at Augusta, and in manners and costume quite a cut above brother Hardy" (1840). The phrase can also contrast a person's current station in life with material signs of greater wealth, position, etc.: "When I first saw it, by Jove! it looked so knowing, with the front garden, and the green railings and the brass knocker, and all that--I really thought it was a cut above me" (Dickens, Sketches by Boz, 1836).

There is even evidence for the much more rare a cut below, as in the following 1891 quote by A. B. Walford: "The girl herself is a cut below par."

Linking all this to high on the hog may be something of a stretch. The two phrases do not mean the same thing, they are not etymologically related, and they emerged at very different times. (A cut above goes back to the late eighteenth century and high on the hog only to the mid 1940s.)

There is, however, an obvious reference to some kind of elevated state in the two words "above" and "high." Living high on the hog meant originally that you ate what were regarded as the superior cuts of meat, the ones on the higher parts of the animal (the cuts above?)--pork chops, hams, etc.--as against the belly, feet, knuckles, jowls, and the like. Someone who lives/eats high off/on the hog is therefore, in the extended sense, pretty well off. A 1966 citation is typical: "That had been a good year, a year of living high off the hog."

But a quote from a 1969 issue of the New Scientist shows that prosperity can be transitory: "A cod lives quite high on the hog--until he turns up on someone else's menu."

Enid