to cut bait
- phrasal verb
- Informal
:
dejar de perder el tiempo
- And once you realize that you do deserve to be seen, you may just finally cut bait and leave.
Sometimes you got to cut bait and move on.
- Sometimes you got to cut bait and move on.
- And once you realize that you do deserve to be seen, you may just finally cut bait and leave.
- It may just be years of a slow death March forward and then one day someone just cuts bait.
- But be prepared, the more of it you do, the more likely they are to either mock you or cut bait.
- I know I get it, the end the lost time is about to be compounded if I don't cut bait right?
Examples
-
At some point, you have to cut bait and decide whether to move forward or let it go.
-
Sometimes you got to cut bait and move on.
-
- Time to fish or cut bait.
-
Gotta cut bait on this deal.
-
And where I'm going with that, I guess, is when did you actually cut bait and quit your job?
-
Fish or cut bait.
-
She realized it was time to cut bait instead of wasting more time on the failing project.
-
When faced with no progress, it's best to cut bait and focus on opportunities that will yield results.
Synonyms
1
8.8
Choose to act now or step aside so someone else can
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
The figurative sense 'stop wasting time and either take decisive action or abandon an unproductive effort' cannot be straightforwardly derived from the literal meanings of 'cut' (to remove) and 'bait' (lure for fish). The phrase is a fishing-derived idiom whose pragmatic, culture-specific extension is not transparent to learners without prior exposure, so a B1 learner who only knows the constituents would likely not infer the intended meaning.
Etymology
Cut bait may come from fishing, where a fisherman who was losing a catch would literally cut the bait or line and move on. That's why today cut bait means 'stop wasting time and take action' or 'abandon an unproductive effort'.