shoot one's cuffs

English

WOTD – 5 February 2018

Pronunciation

The maroon cuff of a man’s shirt visible beyond the sleeve of his jacket

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /ʃuːt wʌnz kʌfs/

• Audio (Southern England):

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Verb

shoot one's cuffs (third-person singular simple present shoots one's cuffs, present participle shooting one's cuffs, simple past and past participle shot one's cuffs)

1. To straighten one's arms with a sudden movement to make the cuffs of one's shirt appear beyond the sleeves of one's coat or jacket.
   • 1875 July 3, “The Capitol’s Critic’s Cookery Book”, in The Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic News: A High-class Weekly Journal of Sports, Art, Literature, Music, and the Drama; Containing Numerous Engravings, from Drawings by Well-known Artists, of Sporting and Dramatic Subjects, volume III, number 71, London: Printed and published by Thomas Fox, at the office, 198, Strand, →OCLC, page 342, column 1:

     Take a pretty young man from behind the desk or the counter. He must be possessed of consummate vanity. Teach him to shoot his cuffs, square his elbows, and brandish his pocket handkerchief.

   • 1920, Sinclair Lewis, chapter IV, in Main Street: The Story of Carol Kennicott, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, →OCLC, section IV, page 52:

     The room filled with hesitancy as with a fog. People cleared their throats, tried to choke down yawns. The men shot their cuffs and the women stuck their combs more firmly into their back hair.

   • 1957, Anthony Powell, At Lady Molly’s: A Novel, London: Heinemann, →OCLC; republished as At Lady Molly’s (A Dance to the Music of Time; 4), London: Arrow Books, 2005, →ISBN, page 186:

     Di, Di, in her collar and tie, / Quizzes the girls with a monocled eye, / Sipping her hock in a black satin stock, / Or shooting her cuffs over pernod or bock …

   • 1979 October, Nicholas Lemann, “Sherwood Blount’s First Million”, in Texas Monthly, Austin, Tx.: Mediatex Communications Corporation, →ISSN, page 148, column 2:

     A visitor would immediately identify Sherwood [Blount] as the leader of the group by his strong, self-conscious stage presence. He cocks his head and shoots his cuffs and swaggers a little when he walks and winks and does double-takes, holding all these gestures for a long second to make sure they register on his audience.

   • 2004 May, Ian Carr, Digby Fairweather, Brian Priestley, quoting Jack Fallon, “Ray Nance”, in The Rough Guide to Jazz, 3rd expanded and completely revised edition, London: Rough Guides, →ISBN, page 576, column 2:

     He was the king of stage presentation. When Duke [Ellington] would be playing he'd do a kind of jig, peckin' round the stage, and every time he'd shoot his cuffs he made his coat tail go up. Then he'd pull his coat down – and up went his cuffs!

Translations

to straighten one's arms with a sudden movement

References

• Michael Quinion (January 3, 2009) “Shoot one's cuffs”, in World Wide Words.