Word.ws English Dictionary

half cut

half cut adjective: rather drunk.

Adjective

half cut (comparative more half cut, superlative most half cut)

  1. (Australia, Canada, Ireland, UK, informal) Rather drunk.
    • He had the girl's head on his shoulder but she was half cut and in her seventh heaven, so he just went on talking to me, proud of his English, you see.1974, John Le Carré, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Folio, published 2009, page 233
    • Drink up thy zider, drink up thy zider, For tonight we'll merry be. We'll knock the milk churns over and roll 'em in the clover, for the corn's half cut and so be we!1975 July, “Drink Up Thy Zider” (track 6), in The Finest 'Arvest of The Wurzels, performed by The Wurzels

Synonyms of half cut

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Forms of half cut

comparativemore half cut
superlativemost half cut
alternative commonhalf-cut

Origin of half cut

Originally jocular derivative of now rare use of cut in this sense, which dates from the 17th century, from cut in the leg, to have cut your leg, euphemism for being very drunk.

Questions about half cut

What does half cut mean?
Half cut means rather drunk.
What part of speech is half cut?
Half cut is an adjective.

Words near half cut in the dictionary

  1. half court
  2. half cousin
  3. half cousins
  4. half crown
  5. half crowns
  6. half cut
  7. half day
  8. half days
  9. half dead
  10. half deck
  11. half decks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: half cut (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-half cut.ogg.

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