cut corners

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English

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Pronunciation

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Verb

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cut corners (third-person singular simple present cuts corners, present participle cutting corners, simple past and past participle cut corners)

  1. To bypass a prescribed route so as to gain competitive advantage or to circumvent traffic signals or other rules of the road.
    • 1882, Dan Seffert, quoted in “Half Hours with Dan Seffert”, in Baily's Magazine of Sports and Pastimes, Volume 39, page 275:
      [] but I believe the old man did not ride fair, as he cut corners and joined in with them again []
  2. (idiomatic) To do a less-than-thorough or incomplete job; to do something poorly; to take inappropriate shortcuts.
    The guy who built the fence cut corners when sinking the posts, and the fence fell over in the last storm.
    Do you know why Wendy's has square burgers? Because they don't cut corners.

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