Word.ws English Dictionary

cut of one's jib

UK/ˌkʌt‿əv wʌnz ˈd͡ʒɪb/

cut of one's jib noun: a person's general appearance, manner, or style.

cut of one's jib: a person's general appearance, manner, or style
Image: Fluzwup, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

cut of one's jib (plural cut of their jibs or cuts of their jibs)

  1. (dated, idiomatic) A person's general appearance, manner, or style.
    • We have only farther to notice Meg's mode of conducting herself towards chance travellers, who, […] stumbled upon her house of entertainment. Her reception of these was as precarious as the hospitality of a savage nation to sailors shipwrecked on their coast. […] [I]f she disliked what the sailor...1823 December 23 (indicated as 1824), [Walter Scott], “An Old-world Landlady”, in St Ronan’s Well. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for Archibald Constable and Co.; London...
    • About eleven o'clock, the captains who were to be our Minos and our Rhadamanthus, made their appearance, and we all agreed that we did not much like the "cut of their jibs."1829, [Frederick Marryat], chapter V, in The Naval Officer; or, Scenes and Adventures in the Life of Frank Mildmay. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 132

Forms of cut of one's jib

pluralcut of their jibs
pluralcuts of their jibs

Origin of cut of one's jib

From cut (“a way of shaping or styling”) and jib (“a triangular staysail set forward of the foremast”), originally a nautical expression alluding to the identification of far-off sailing vessels by the shape of their sails. The idiomatic sense may have been influenced by the similarity of a triangular jib sail to a person’s nose.

Words that rhyme with cut of one's jib

11 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about cut of one's jib

What does cut of one's jib mean?
Cut of one's jib means a person's general appearance, manner, or style.
What part of speech is cut of one's jib?
Cut of one's jib is a noun.
How do you pronounce cut of one's jib?
Cut of one's jib is pronounced /ˌkʌt‿əv wʌnz ˈd͡ʒɪb/ (UK).
What is the plural of cut of one's jib?
The plural of cut of one's jib is cut of their jibs.

Words near cut of one's jib in the dictionary

  1. cut lunch
  2. cut lunches
  3. cut money
  4. cut nail
  5. cut nails
  6. cut of one's jib
  7. cut of the same cloth
  8. cut of their jibs
  9. cut off
  10. cut off a corner
  11. cut off at the pass

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cut of one's jib (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-cut of one's jib.ogg.

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