English
scissor
Pronunciation
  • (RP) IPA: /ˈsɪzə/
  • (GA) IPA: /ˈsɪzɚ/
Noun

scissor (plural scissors)

  1. (rare) One blade on a pair of scissors.
  2. (India) Scissors.
  3. (noun adjunct) Used in certain noun phrases to denote a thing resembling the action of scissors, as scissor kick, scissor hold (wrestling), scissor jack.
Translations Verb

scissor (scissors, present participle scissoring; past and past participle scissored)

  1. (transitive) To cut using, or as if using, scissors.
    • 1634, John Fletcher (playwright) and William Shakespeare, The Two Noble Kinsmen, London: John Waterson, Act I, Scene 2, p. 10,
      […] let me know,
      Why mine owne Barber is unblest, with him
      My poore Chinne too, for tis not Cizard iust
      To such a Favorites glasse […]
    • 1829, uncredited author, “Letters from London,” No. VIII, The Edinburgh Literary Journal, Volume I, Number 19, 21 March, 1829, p. 267,
      [The poem] “All for Love” […] was originally intended for the Keepsake—the Editor of which Annual proposed to have it scissored down into genteel dimensions, which the Laureate refused to do […]
    • 1958, Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's (novella), New York: Vintage, 1993 Chapter 4, p. 37,
      Tucked between the pages were Sunday features, together with scissored snippings from gossip columns.
    • 1993, Paul Theroux, Millroy the Magician, New York: Ivy Books, 1995, Chapter 4, p. 29,
      […] Millroy scissored open his pants leg and bandaged his shin.
    • 2008, Toni Morrison, A Mercy, New York: Knopf, p. 48,
      They clipped the beads from her arms and scissored inches from her hair.
  2. (transitive) To excise or expunge something from a text.
    The erroneous testimony was scissored from the record.
    • 1955, Lionel Shapiro, The Sixth of June, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Chapter 15,
      The next line and a half had been scissored out by the censor.
    • 2003, William Gass, “The Shears of the Censor” in Tests of Time, University of Chicago Press, p. 190,
      At one university the navy made me attend, I took out a Chaucer which had lines scissored out […]
  3. (transitive, obsolete) To reproduce (text) as an excerpt, copy.
    • 1832, Review of The Etymological Encyclopœdia by D. J. Browne, The New-England Magazine, Volume 3, September, 1832, p. 256,
      The public are no longer excluded from the beauties of Science, if there is any virtue in 257 pages of etymology, scissored from “the best authorities.”
    • 1881, advertisement for Pattison’s Missouri Digest, 1873, published in The Texas Reports: Cases Adjudged in the Supreme Court, Volume 3, Austin: Gammel-Statesman Publishing,
      This Digest is the result of a careful reading of every case, and not a mere scissoring of head notes, as is so often done by digesters.
  4. (transitive, intransitive) To move something like a pair of scissors, especially the legs.
    ''The runner scissored over the hurdles.
    • 1938, Raymond Chandler, “The King in Yellow,” Part Three, in The Simple Art of Murder, Houghton Mifflin, 1950,
      She lay on her side on the floor under the bed, long legs scissored out as if in running.
    • 1969, Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, New York: Bantam, 1971, Chapter 22, p. 140,
      His jaws were scissoring mechanically on the already mushy sweet potatoes.
    • 1978, Edmund White, Nocturnes for the King of Naples, Penguin, 1980, Chapter 5, p. 67,
      […] I stand on tiptoe, lift a shade and see a pair of nyloned legs scissoring through a cold, wet, metropolitan afternoon.
    • 1989, Guy Vanderhaeghe, Homesick, New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1990, Chapter 9, p. 139,
      She’s got her arms locked around his belly and her legs scissored around his shins […]
  5. (intransitive, sex) To engage in scissoring (tribadism), a sexual act in which two women intertwine their legs and rub their vulvas against each other.
  6. (skating) To skate with one foot significantly in front of the other.
Translations
  • French: couper aux ciseaux
Translations

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