cut the mustard

English

WOTD – 3 February 2024

Etymology

From cut (“to exhibit (a quality)”) + the + mustard (“(originally US slang) something adding spice or zest to a situation; something setting the standard”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /kʌt ðə ˈmʌstəd/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /kʌt ðə ˈmʌstəɹd/

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌstəd
• Hyphenation: cut the mus‧tard

Verb

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

1. (intransitive, idiomatic) To achieve the expected standard; to be effective or good enough; to suffice.

   Synonyms: be up to par, be up to scratch, be up to snuff, cut it, hack it, make the cut, make the grade, measure up, pass muster

   Give me the bigger hammer. This little one just doesn’t cut the mustard.

   • 1907, O. Henry [pseudonym; William Sydney Porter], “Cupid à la Carte”, in Heart of the West, New York, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company for Review of Reviews Co., →OCLC, page 163:

     By nature and doctrines I am addicted to the habit of discovering choice places wherein to feed. So I looked around and found a proposition that exactly cut the mustard. I found a restaurant tent just opened up by an outfit that had drifted in on the tail of the boom.

   • 1940 March 21, Fred Cummings, committee member, “Statement of Albert S. Goss [Former Land Bank Commissioner, Farm Credit Administration, Washington, D.C.]—Resumed”, in Farm Credit Legislation: Hearing before the Committee on Agriculture, Committee on Agriculture, House of Representatives, Seventy-sixth Congress, Third Session on H.R. 8748 […], Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, →OCLC, page 194:

     [I]f a man gets a loan and over a period of years he has demonstrated that he cannot cut the mustard, how is he going to demonstrate it in a period of 12 months?

Usage notes

• This idiom usually appears in negative polarity contexts: “can’t cut the mustard”, “doesn’t cut the mustard”, and so on.

Translations

to achieve the expected standard; to be effective or good enough — see also suffice

• Arabic: يفي بالغرض‎
• Esperanto: please add this translation if you can
• Finnish: kelvata (fi), riittää (fi)
• French: faire le poids (fr)
• German: es bringen
• Hungarian: elég jó, megjárja (hu), tűrhető (hu)
• Macedonian: please add this translation if you can
• Russian: потянуть (ru) pf (potjanutʹ)
• Swedish: duga (sv), räcka till (sv)
• Turkish: kesmek (tr)

Further reading

• Michael Quinion (created August 1, 1998, last updated January 22, 2000), “Cut the mustard”, in World Wide Words.
• Michael Quinion (2004), “Cut the mustard”, in Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds: Ingenious Tales of Words and Their Origins, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books in association with Penguin Books, →ISBN.