Cutting Didos.

Comments

1. ktschwarz says

   October 22, 2026 at 3:11 pm

   DARE says dido n. is “usu pl; also kedidoes (cf ker-): A caper, prank, shenanigan; a fit of anger; an unexpected outburst—usu in phrr cut (up) didoes and varr. Widespread, but esp New England, South, South Midland”, with quotations into the 20th century.

   As you can tell from the 1919 citation, the OED’s entry isn’t exactly as it was in 1895; several quotations were added in Burchfield’s Supplement, including the earliest one. Their attribution to “J. R. Shaw, Life” is incomplete, but DARE has the same quote with a complete attribution: Shaw, John Robert, A Narrative of the Life & Travels of John Robert Shaw, the Well-Digger. There’s an appreciation of Shaw at this Kentucky news and culture site (by Harry Enoch):

   One hilarious read I stumbled on was written at a surprisingly early date. A Narrative of the Life & Travels of John Robert Shaw, the Well-Digger was published in 1807 by John Bradford, editor of the Kentucky Gazette. Born in England, Shaw joined the British army and came to America in 1778. He described his plights with the military from Rhode Island to South Carolina. He stayed on after the war, trying desperately to assimilate in the fledgling nation. …

   In his adopted professions of quarrying and well digging, Shaw used quantities of black powder to “blow rock” and succeeded in blowing himself up multiple times. In 1806, the Kentucky Gazette published his obituary … To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of Shaw’s demise were greatly exaggerated. …

   Sounds like a man who was ready to laugh at himself, though I wonder how much of a hand the editor of the Kentucky Gazette had in the actual writing.

   Context for the quotation:

   At Strode’s station I met a soldier who was amongst those who took me prisoner, and whom I treated kindly, as he was in part the means of my continuing in a land of liberty. Taking up goods in Cock and Lytle’s store, to the amount of eighteen pounds, I jogged on with them to Clarke court house, and there commenced a roaring frolic, with a set of as jovial fellows as ever sat over a half pint of whiskey, amongst whom was a jolly Irishman, who cut as many didos as I could for the life of me; consequently he and I became the butts of the company, and at length began to wrestle, he being booted and spirred, and being likewise dexterous at the fun, had greatly the advantage of me, who had no shield against his steel but a thin pair of trowsers, and nothing to oppose his dexterity but strength; however by repeating our wrestling, I gained some knowledge of the art, and ultimately got the better of my old Hibernian, though not before I had my legs properly indented with his steel gaffs; the only recompence I could make for which, was to lay him on his back in the fire to dry as it were.
2. David Eddyshaw says

   October 22, 2026 at 3:27 pm

   I’ve come across this (I forget where) as “cutting up didoes.”
3. Y says

   October 22, 2026 at 4:10 pm

   Farmer’s 1890–1904 slang dictionary, here, says,

   CUT or CUT UP DIDOES, SHINDIES, SHINES, etc., verbal phr. (colloquial).— To play pranks or tricks; the same as CUT CAPERS.

   18(?). Pickings from the Picayune, p. 147. This ’ere Frenchman has been CUTTING UP DIDOES in my house now for several days; he aint sober onst a week, and breaks all my cheers and tables Mr. Recorder.

   1851. New York Tribune, 10 April. Had the Free States been manly enough, true enough, to enact the Wilmot Proviso as to all present or future territories of the Union, we should have had just the same DIDOES CUT UP by the chivalry that we have witnessed, and with no more damage to the Union.

   It looks like dido, like caper and shindy, refers originally to some kind of lively dancing. (“Cutting a rug” first appeared in the 1930s and seems unrelated.)

   Any connection to Queen Dido seems dotty.
4. languagehat says

   October 22, 2026 at 4:12 pm

   I think I’ll adopt it as part of my grandfatherly persona. “Oh, don’t pay him any mind — he’s been cutting up didos again, but he’s a good lad and means no harm.”
5. ktschwarz says

   October 22, 2026 at 4:23 pm

   Green has various quotations including the mid-19th-century English Slang Dictionary by John Hotten, which has “‘to cut up didoes,’ to make pranks”; he also has a Scottish quotation from 1898 and one from a London newspaper in 1886. These are much later than the early American citations, but that was a time when it was a lot less likely for American slang to cross back to Britain, so I wonder if it really originated earlier in Britain but went unrecorded there? (John Robert Shaw was born in Yorkshire.)

   The English Dialect Dictionary also has citations for dido, sb. “1. A disturbance, noise; a fuss … 2. pl Tricks, antics, eccentric feats”, from Ireland, Kent, the Isle of Wight, Cornwall, and America, but they’re all 1880 or later, except for the American one. (Most of these quotations were incorporated into the OED.)
6. Brett says

   October 22, 2026 at 5:19 pm

   When I first saw the post title, my mind went to “cutting dadoes,” but then I remembered that had already been discussed.
7. languagehat says

   October 22, 2026 at 5:37 pm

   Thanks for linking to that; I’d entirely forgotten what a dado was.
8. V says

   October 22, 2026 at 10:31 pm

   Brett : I first thought of diodes — of the semiconductor type.
9. rozele says

   October 22, 2026 at 10:56 pm

   i know “cutting dido(e)s” as a fixed phrase in literary contexts, and definitely understand it as basically synonymous with “cutting capers” – but for me, “cutting up” (with no object) also means the same thing, so i wonder whether “cutting up didos” is just a collapse of the two?
10. Y says

    October 23, 2026 at 1:35 am

    Green has lots of examples of “cut up” and “cut (up) a shine”. How could I have forgotten the King in Huckleberry Finn? “It would a made a cow laugh, to see the shines that old idiot cut.”