cut both ways

English

Pronunciation

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Verb

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

1. To have both benefits and drawbacks.
   • March 10 2012, New Zealand Herald, Michele Hewitson interview: Ben Fouhy[1]

     A redundant observation about Ben Fouhy: It's not easy being him. "No, not really. But that cuts both ways you know, that affords me the opportunities, the highs and lows, the heights and depths that perhaps other people don't ... experience."

2. To have implications for something as well as its counterpart.
   • 2009 June, Emmanuel Amiot, “Discrete Fourier Transform and Bach’s Good Temperament”, in Music Theory Online, volume 15, number 2, →DOI:

     Readers are invited at this point to listen to the pleasant sound of the recordings in LT [Lehman’s temperament], which can be found on this page. Together with the record value of MSS [Music Sameness of Scales], this makes a convincing case for Lehman’s hypothesis. But arguments, like a razor,(5) cut both ways: some lesser known temperament might achieve a better MSS than LT

   • 2016 October 27, Charlie Brennan, Kevin Vaughan, “DNA in doubt: New analysis challenges DA's exoneration of Ramseys”, in Loveland Reporter Herald‎^[2], archived from the original on 2016-10-29:

     And the findings could cut both ways. / "It's certainly possible that an intruder was responsible for the murder, but I don't think that the DNA evidence proves it," said William C. Thompson […] Similarly, the findings don't implicate or exonerate anyone in the family.

   • 2016 November 4, Andrew Cohen, Sean II, “Time for Political Disruption”, in Bleeding Heart Libertarians‎^[3], retrieved 2021-03-09, Comments:

     […] It may be tempting to criticize my analogy because it assumes a case where one vote can actually influence the outcome. That would be fair, of course, but it would also cut both ways. / If you're vote can't be strategic because it is statistically meaningless, then neither can it be moral. / In which case both arguments - vote your conscience & vote your strategy - should be dumped in favor of a third: don't vote.

   This argument cuts both ways.

3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see cut,‎ both,‎ ways.

See also

• double-edged
• two-edged
• cruel mistress

Further reading

• “cut both ways”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “cut both ways”, in Collins English Dictionary.
• “cut both ways”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.
• “cut both ways” in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Longman.