Word.ws English Dictionary

cut ice

cut ice verb: to have influence (on something, especially someone's opinion); to be accepted or tolerated (by).

Verb

cut ice (third-person singular simple present cuts ice, present participle cutting ice, simple past and past participle cut ice)

  1. (usually, often in the negative) To have influence (on something, especially someone's opinion); to be accepted or tolerated (by).
    • Will that cut any ice with Moscow? No, they won't care.
    • It cuts no ice with a British copper to tell him you're an American citizen. 'It's British law and order over here,' says he.1917, Arthur Conan Doyle, “His Last Bow”, in His Last Bow

Examples of cut ice in a sentence

  • He recalls that the major challenge was to convince business leaders to take training seriously: 'We had to use language that cut ice with chief executives.'1999, Julian Cummins, Ian Stubbs, Investors in People in the Church: The Introduction of the Investors Standard in Dioceses, Parishes and...
  • The point is that the “tests" were usually made in the context of specific, everyday situations and lacked rhetoric which cut ice with the intellectuals.2009 April 22, The Unity of Theory and Practice in Anthropology: Rebuilding A Fractured Synthesis, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 31:
  • ... he had the oratorical delivery to match, and that cut ice with the people in high places.2015 June 30, Shona Patel, Flame Tree Road, MIRA, →ISBN, page 341:

Forms of cut ice

third-person singular presentcuts ice
present participlecutting ice
past participlecut ice
pastcut ice

Questions about cut ice

What does cut ice mean?
Cut ice means to have influence (on something, especially someone's opinion); to be accepted or tolerated (by).
How do you use cut ice in a sentence?
He recalls that the major challenge was to convince business leaders to take training seriously: 'We had to use language that cut ice with chief executives.'
What part of speech is cut ice?
Cut ice is a verb.
What is the past tense of cut ice?
The past tense of cut ice is cut ice.

Words near cut ice in the dictionary

  1. cut fastball
  2. cut fastballs
  3. cut for sign
  4. cut from the same cloth
  5. cut glass
  6. cut ice
  7. cut in
  8. cut in line
  9. cut into
  10. cut it
  11. cut it close

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cut ice (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-cut no ice.ogg.

Cite this entry: “cut ice.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cut_ice. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.