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
The younger man was balancing the paper-cutter across his finger.
From The City of Numbered Days by Lynde, Francis
There was a pause, and Mr. King turned off to play with the paper-cutter again.
From Ben Pepper by Sidney, Margaret
The silence that followed was broken only by the tap, tap, tap of the Lieutenant-Governor's paper-cutter on the silver-mounted blotter.
From The Lieutenant-Governor A Novel by Carryl, Guy Wetmore
The merchant makes obeisance and proffers you a paper-cutter or a box of candied ginger.
From East of Suez Ceylon, India, China and Japan by Penfield, Frederic Courtland
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.
