First recorded in 1820–30
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Defying increasingly popular mass-production techniques, second-generation paper cutter Yuridia Torres Alfaro, 49, still makes her own stencils at her family’s workshop in Xochimilco, on the rural southern edge of Mexico City.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 27, 2022
Using a 19th-century guillotine-style paper cutter, Wagner cut thousands of pieces of paper in 10 different sizes, all rectangles in the same proportions that Powers favors.
From New York Times ● Jan. 11, 2022
Wildes headed to a paper cutter at the other end of Interact Center for the Visual and Performing Arts in St. Paul and began slicing his picture into 1-inch strips.
From Washington Times ● May 12, 2018
Reston’s Molly O’Boyle is particularly fond of the sound of a tabletop paper cutter doing its job.
From Washington Post
A man in a down jacket is using the paper cutter near the door, trimming a stack of pale blue cards.
From "Goodbye Stranger" by Rebecca Stead
They had not yet built any new Jerusalem, and the sword in their hand sometimes seemed hardly more than a paper-cutter.
From Time Magazine Archive
You know your aunt's paper-cutter was found——" "That proves nothing.
From In the Onyx Lobby by Wells, Carolyn
He did not need me before Monday, but he told me to come back that day at half-past seven and to bring a bone paper-cutter with me.
From The Long Day The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself by Richardson, Dorothy
In the latter instance, if he be a very thoughtful man, he might undertake to remove the indentation by rubbing the opposite side with the end of his knife or with an ivory paper-cutter.
From Final Proof or the Value of Evidence by Ottolengui, R.
As he advanced and greeted the artist, she heard a quick, snapping sound, and saw the beautiful Bohemian glass paper-cutter her guardian had been using lying shivered to atoms on the rug.
From Macaria by Evans, Augusta J. (Augusta Jane)
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
