cut of one's jib

Definition

A person's general appearance, manner, or style.

Etymology

From cut (“a way of shaping or styling”) and jib (“a triangular staysail set forward of the foremast”), originally a nautical expression alluding to the identification of far-off sailing vessels by the shape of their sails. The idiomatic sense may have been influenced by the similarity of a triangular jib sail to a person’s nose.

Example Sentences

• "We have only farther to notice Meg's mode of conducting herself towards chance travellers, who, […] stumbled upon her house of entertainment. Her reception of these was as precarious as the hospitality of a savage nation to sailors shipwrecked on their coast. […] [I]f she disliked what the sailor calls the cut of their jibb—or if, above all, they were critical about their accommodations, none so likely as Meg to give them what in her country is called a sloan."
• "About eleven o'clock, the captains who were to be our Minos and our Rhadamanthus, made their appearance, and we all agreed that we did not much like the "cut of their jibs.""
• "I axes you, because I see you're a sailor by the cut of your jib."