cut and run

Idioms and Phrases

Clear out, escape, desert, as in He wished he could just cut and run . This term originally (about 1700) meant to cut a vessel's anchor cable and make sail at once. By the mid-1800s it was being used figuratively. Charles Dickens had it in Great Expectations (1861): “I'd give a shilling if they had cut and run.” Also see cut out , def. 7.

Example Sentences

Today the Gipper would be considered lily-livered, a “ surrender monkey,” another member of the “cut-and-run crowd.”

From The Daily Beast

But it is reassuring that this withdrawal does not have, about it, the feel of a totally cynical cut-and-run.

From The Daily Beast

Ill betide the Hun who dared to make a cut-and-run raid upon Dover.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• avoid
• depart
• disappear
• dodge
• elude
• emerge
• evade
• flee
• fly
• leave
• run
• slip
• slip away
• vanish