Can anyone please tell us where the expression "cutting the mustard" comes from. Thank you.?

Answer 1

It's a bastardization of the phrase "cutting the muster".... in olden times, officers would muster the troops for inspections. If the soldier failed the inspection, he didn't cut the muster. So, now, someone that doesn't live up to expectations, doesn't cut the mustard.

Answer 2

"Doesn't cut the mustard" or Can't cut the mustard" is an older phrase used to describe something that cannot complete a certain task or is unable of doing something:

"I'm sorry, but your band just doesn't cut the mustard."

It is unknown how this phrase began, but it has been most commonly attributed to the author O. Henry. It is said that he began the phrase when he wrote "So I looked around and found a proposition that exactly cut the mustard." He may have been referring to a mustard seed, which is a very small and slippery, making it hard to cut. A very good knife would then be needed to cut the mustard seed.

Another possible explanation comes from cooking. Mustard is has quite a tang, and another ingredient may be added to reduce the tang but keep the flavor, or "cut" the mustard. If one were cooking with mustard but had not added enough of the ingredient meant to reduce the tang, then they would not have "cut the mustard", and their cooking would have been sub-standard.

Answer 3

Theories abound. They include: that it comes from an old western expression, the proper mustard, meaning "the real thing" at first and then "the best". Canadian linguist Mark Israel cites O. Henry's _Cabbages and Kings_ of 1894, in which he used 'mustard' to mean the main attraction: "I'm not headlined in the bills, but I'm the mustard in the salad dressing, just the same." Israel also says the use of 'mustard' as a positive superlative dates from 1659 in the phrase "keen as mustard",
and the use of 'cut' to denote rank (as in "a cut above") dates from the 18th century. That it comes from separate meanings of both 'cut' and 'mustard.' Donald Graeme in his _Dictionary of Modern Phrases_ says 'cut' in this sense derives from its meaning of "to perform or achieve", and mustard is "hot or sharp", both of which adjectives have come to mean "able
and clever." That it comes from the Latin 'mostrare' "to show", as in the military phrase "to pass muster" (this accords with Graeme's point about cut meaning achieve - old soldiers will tell you that making it to the early morning muster parade is sometimes a huge achievement after a night in the mess). Hope this helps.

Answer 4

From http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-cut1.htm

It seems that the phrase is of early twentieth-century US origin. The first recorded use of the phrase is by O Henry in 1907, in a story called The Heart of the West: “I looked around and found a proposition that exactly cut the mustard”. The modern sense of the idiom is “to succeed; to have the ability to do something; to come up to expectations”. But why that exact phrase, nobody seems to know. Cutting mustard is hardly an arduous endeavour, after all, and there seems not to be any older phrase to which it is related.



There's quite a bit more on worlwidewords about it.