Although I eventually bought a new one (or it might have been I picked one up second hand in better condition) my copy of The Little Oxford Dictionary has been in my possession for over fifty years!  It was bought for me to start Secondary School and it stayed with me through the years: at the bottom of my satchel, brief case, attache case and all the other cases and containers that I have used through the years.  In university it was 'on the desk' and that is where it is now.
     The original is very much the worse for wear: stained, pages folded, front cover hanging on with a strip of agèd brown Sellotape, but the text is still useable and readable.  It has been a very, very good buy.
     I am fascinated by works of reference and I have bought many since the early sixties of the last century, including a variety of English dictionaries of various sizes and complexity.  I also have (though I have to be honest, rarely consult) the photographically reduced full Oxford English Dictionary - which has to be read with a magnifying glass.  Whenever I do actually consult it (usually for the historical use section of the words' definitions) I feel like a scholar of old, pouring over some massive tome in a library given over to academe!
     So, my first choice of reference for spelling and definition was from the Third Edition of a little book published a decade before I was born, and I continue to use to this day.  It was only when I looked up the definitions of the verb 'to cut' that I began to think about how society has changed and about how my work of reference was so out of date.
     The definition that informs the central section of this poem was not available on the first couple of internet dictionaries that I consulted - obviously the meaning that I was using was considered so esoteric that it didn't need to be included!  Times change and we with them.
     The poem starts with observation, the little dramas that play out in front of me when, with notebook on the table and pen poised, I wait for my tea to infuse.  The girl's whining first attracted my attention and then the action and reaction of her brother.  It was his ability to 'cut' his sister that I admired and gave this poem its impetus.
     I am sure that some sort of scholarly study could be done checking where the definition of 'cut' (in the sense that I use it) comes in various dictionaries of English; how it changes in other countries that use English, and how popular it is.  I fear that 'cutting' is a declining art and that it has been replaced by sheer rudeness instead!
     The end of the poem uses social media as its conclusion.  I am not sure that this is the modern version of the older 'art' of cutting, but I am sure that it is used in something like the same way - though refusing to answer the phone is not, in my book, the same thing at all!

To cut

. . . decline to recognize person; . . .

The Little Oxford Dictionary, Third Edition 1941, reprinted 1957.

[Definition 7 of 8]

Child grizzle-crying,

ugly glasses,

mother-clingy,

grasping flesh

and all attention.

Mock-derided

by her brother,

who, ignored,

slumped thinker-like,

within his coat,

unhappily.

The stand-off didn’t last,

of course, and soon

the two of them

made equal plays

for parents’ eyes

they both knew

were their right.

The girl’s attention

switched to dad.

The son felt

pushed away;

walked by.

Only kids can ‘cut’

as if it were instinct

and not technique.

That walking past

as if a person

was not there;

was never there,

yet making it

so clear that

they’d

been seen.

My dictionary was always there,

through school and university and job.

‘Authority’ from nineteen forty-one,

‘revisions’, nineteen fifty-seven,

and published the same year

            where words like: nudist,

Pluto, calypso, jive,

yoghurt, lobotomy, rumpus, svelte,

perspex, parsec, hamburger –

had, “recently made good their claim”

and made Addenda not The Book

            description of a cricket shot

was higher up the list of use

than distain by averted gaze

As it must be.

Proximity is relative;

one can unfriend, unfollow,

with a gentle tap
on distant, solitary keys.

I do like the word svelte though, alas, I am a long way from claiming the adjective in relation to myself!  

     I know that some publishing houses produce yearly books of neologisms as a sort of half-way house towards inclusion in the full dictionary, I have a few of them myself and it is interesting to see that some of the words did not make it any further!  

     I am not sure that svelte is instantly recognisable for most people, but that is no reason not to go on using it, in the same way that the definition of 'cut' used in the poem should be preserved, and perhaps practised!