Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
“Cutless” can stand as a word on its own meaning “not having cuts” or perhaps in other contexts. The trick is to identify eggcorn usages.
A “cutlass” is a short heavy sword once used by sailors. (The etymology includes MF coutel knife. I’m not sure whether this etymology intersects with that for cut ME cutten). In a sense, “cutlass” would be a stealth eggcorn if the utterer has a literal image for “cut.” But again, this depends on whether the etymology would have hinted at that anyway.
The term “cutless” is one additional image removed from stealth imagery of “cutlass.” Perhaps some utterers view the knife strictly as a weapon or strictly as an ornament …not intending for cutting purposes …and therefore “cutless.” On the other hand, this might just be a case where the utterer simply assumes the components are “cut” and “less” without giving much thought to the precise imagery involved.
Pirate Cutless – Halloween Costumes at Halloween StreetThis pirate cutless is 18 inches long with black handle. / /Perfect for any size pirate!.
www.halloweenstreet.com/Accessories/Pir … utless.htm – 27k – Cached – Similar pages
Here’s another usage context…
Google counts on June 29, 2007
318,000 “cutlass supreme”
708 “cutless supreme” (+ numerous other stray sightings of “cutless” pertaining to automobiles)
Whereas this term is an automobile model, one has to wonder whether a distinct imagery applies. The only notion I could concoct was a blend of “cut above the rest” and “peerless” producing “cutless.” Again, I don’t think the utterers have a clear notion in their minds either.
I wonder if this could still be an eggcorn, yet have such nebulous imagery to it. Seems that a lot of other eggcorns have that problem as well.
Last edited by jorkel (2007-06-29 15:24:23)
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Wow, historical instances of folk etymology seem to be the forum topic of the week.
English “cut” and Middle French “coutel” are unrelated. But the OED agrees with Jorkel’s intuitions—“cut” has influenced the form of “cutlass” in English. Turns out in fact that there are a boatload of eggcornish spelling variants of “cutlass.” Here’s the OED etymology (The OED’s copyright people are gonna be after me if I keep this up):
The original coutel-as, coutel-ace, has undergone many perversions in English under the influence of popular etymology, which has transformed the first part into cuttle, curtal, curtle, curt, cut, and the second into ax, axe. A later change has made cutlass into cut-lash. The forms cuttle-ax and cut-lash are included here; see CURTELACE, CURTAL-AXE, CURT-AXE, in their alphabetical places.
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