cutthroat
/ˈkʌtθɹəʊt/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
Northern England/ˈkʊtθɹəʊt/
cutthroat noun: a murderer who slits the throats of victims. Also the ellipsis of cutthroat compound.
Noun
cutthroat (countable and uncountable, plural cutthroats)
- A murderer who slits the throats of victims.
- An unscrupulous, ruthless or unethical person.
- The jail had not housed a white criminal in over four years, and there is seldom a prisoner of any kind, the Sheriff being a lazy no-good, prone to take his ease with a bottle of liquor, and let trouble-makers and thieves, even the most dangerous type of cutthroats, run free and wild.1948, Truman Capote, Other Voices, Other Rooms, Part One, 1
- A three-player pocket billiards game where the object is to be the last player with at least one ball still on the table.
Adjective
cutthroat (comparative more cutthroat, superlative most cutthroat)
- Involving the cutting of throats.
- Of or relating to a card game where everyone plays for him or herself rather than playing with a partner.
- He found that playing cutthroat Spades was much more difficult than playing with a partner.
- Ruthlessly competitive, dog-eat-dog.
- Law is a cutthroat business, you always have to look out to see who is trying to outdo you.
- More specifically, Scrabblers are diehard, competitive, and occasionally cutthroat players who treat the game like it's chess or baseball...2010, Kate Stevens, Freak Nation, page 159
Also used as
cutthroat is also the ellipsis of cutthroat compound.
Examples of cutthroat in a sentence
- This is a cutthroat industry. You have to constantly look over your shoulder.
- Cutthroat compounds name things or people by describing what they do.
- When I first came into the league, the trash talk was downright cutthroat."
Forms of cutthroat
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | cutthroats |
| alternative form | cut-throat |
| alternative form | cut throat |
| Adjective | |
| comparative | more cutthroat |
| superlative | most cutthroat |
Origin of cutthroat
From cut + throat.
Words formed from cutthroat
Phrases with cutthroat
Questions about cutthroat
- What does cutthroat mean?
- Cutthroat means a murderer who slits the throats of victims.
- What part of speech is cutthroat?
- Cutthroat can be a noun or an adjective.
- How do you pronounce cutthroat?
- Cutthroat is pronounced /ˈkʌtθɹəʊt/ (UK).
- What is the plural of cutthroat?
- The plural of cutthroat is cutthroats.
Words near cutthroat in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: cutthroat (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-cutthroat.wav.
Cite this entry: “cutthroat.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cutthroat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.