cuts both ways

Verb

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

1. (idiomatic) To have both benefits and drawbacks.
   • A redundant observation about Ben Fouhy: It's not easy being him. "No, not really. But that cuts both ways you know, that affords me the opportunities, the highs and lows, the heights and depths that perhaps other people don't ... experience."March 10 2012, New Zealand Herald, Michele Hewitson interview: Ben Fouhyhttps://web.archive.org/web/20131016033007/http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=10791043
2. (idiomatic) To have implications for something as well as its counterpart.
   • Readers are invited at this point to listen to the pleasant sound of the recordings in LT [Lehman’s temperament], which can be found on this page. Together with the record value of MSS [Music Sameness of Scales], this makes a convincing case for Lehman’s hypothesis. But arguments, like a razor,(5)...2009 June, Emmanuel Amiot, “Discrete Fourier Transform and Bach’s Good Temperament”, in Music Theory Online, volume 15, number 2, →DOI
3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see cut, both, ways.