Like the cut of his jib?

Reader question:

Please explain “like the cut of his jib” in this passage: I know George. I like the cut of his jib. He’s a good person.

My comments:

This could mean that the speaker likes the shape of George’s nose, but “like the cut of someone’s jib” is an idiom that’s never taken literally. And, quite obviously, the speaker likes George because George is a good person overall.

“Jib” in “the cut of someone’s jib” is a nautical term originally, referring to one of the sails of a ship. Royal Museums Greenwich (RMG.co.uk) explains:

Jibs are triangular sails that are found at the front of a ship. The shape of jibs varied across countries and nations, and as a result, 18th-century sailors could identify a warship as a friend or foe by the shape of their jib. Nowadays, if you like the cut of someone’s jib then you like the way they look or act.

The great Scottish writer Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) is credited with the first figurative use of this phrase, according to LiteraryDevices.net:

The phrase “cut of your jib” is stated to have been first used by Sir Walter Scott in his novel, St. Ronan’s Well, which was published in 1824. The phrase in the novel goes thus; “If she disliked what the sailor calls the cut of their jib.”

Fine but, in our example, what does George’s nose got to do with it?

Well, due to the fact that all jibs are triangular in shape, like the human nose, some people believe that “jib” in “like the cut of someone’s jib” refers to someone’s nose. And if you like the cut or shape of someone’s nose, you like their appearance.

Makes sense?

It makes some sense. But, like I said, “like the cut of someone’s jib” is not to be taken literally. If you like the shape of someone’s nose, you’ll just say that you like his nose. You will say so, directly.

To sum up, to “like someone’s jib” is to like someone in a general way – how they carry themselves, how they speak, how they act in different situations and so forth.

This idiom is, in fact, a rather literary expression that’s no longer used in everyday conversation.

I mean, not in every conversation, not every day.

So, if you want to use this idiom, use it correctly – and sparingly.

Now, let’s read a few media examples:

1. If I were entering a contest to win a dream date with Dick Cheney, here is what I would say: We would definitely go fishing. Not bait fishing, which is for amateurs, a category that does not include Cheney, but fly-fishing. Way up in the Wind River Range of Wyoming, someplace beautiful and remote like that. We’d make camp, and then we’d get up before dawn and go out on the river. You have to be cool and patient and quiet to be a good fly fisherman – that’s Cheney. We’d spend the whole day out there, just working the pools, not talking. With Cheney you do a lot of not talking. Maybe every hour or so, I’d ask him a question, and he’d answer with a “yep” or a “nope” or a “little bit,” nothing more. Any fish we caught, we’d throw them back. Then at the end of the day we’d build a fire and Cheney would make dinner – he’s a really good cook, just basic American stuff, though, spaghetti and chili and stew. But I would tease him about how bad his cooking is. That’s one of the rules with Cheney: he won’t tease you, but you can tease him – under that masculine proviso by which you can express affection only through patently unmeant insults – and he kind of likes it.

One thing that would be sure not to happen would be Cheney starting in with the big-shot, puffed-up Washington talk. He’s still real. But maybe, around the fire, relaxed, I’d work up the nerve to ask him what he really thought about the important matters he deals with, and maybe, if the date was going well, he’d answer, laconically, but I’d know I could take it to the bank. Gorbachev? He’d tug the corner of his mouth down, the way he does. Unrealistic, ambitious, fancy-pants: no need to spell it out, the meaning’s clear. Alan Greenspan? “Good man.” With Cheney you learn not to interrupt; sometimes there’s one sentence and then quite a long time passes before the next sentence. “Patriot.”

And then after we’d packed up and gone home my wife would say, “So, what did you talk about all that time?” And I’d say, “Well, we didn’t really talk. We just fished.”

I doubt that my entry would win – there’s too much competition. Vice-President Cheney is a man with a powerful anti-charisma. The way he got to be chairman of the Halliburton Company, supposedly, is that he was on a fishing trip (fly-fishing, of course) on the remote Miramichi River, in New Brunswick, with a bunch of big corporate names – their dream date. After a long, silent day, he decided to turn in early. The businessmen were sitting around talking and the conversation turned to how Halliburton needed a new C.E.O. After a while, somebody said, “What about ol’ Cheney?” Since he was asleep in the lodge, he couldn’t gruffly protest that he’d never worked in business, but his mysterious silent magic was permeating the place – so that was it, he got the job.

...

Richard Bruce Cheney was born in 1941 in Nebraska, the descendant of high-plains homesteaders out of a Willa Cather novel. One grandfather was a cook on the Union Pacific railroad, the other a cashier in a bank that went under during the Depression. His father, who supposedly made Cheney look like Kathie Lee Gifford in the volubility department, was a federal bureaucrat – decades with the Soil Conservation Service, winding up as a GS-13 – and both parents were loyal Democrats, proud to say that their son Dick had been born on Franklin Roosevelt’s birthday. When Cheney was thirteen years old, his father was transferred from Lincoln, Nebraska, to Casper, Wyoming.

Casper back then, at least as described by Cheney and his high-school friends, was an exact version of the idea we have of America in the fifties. It was a rural town where everybody knew everybody else, where doors were never locked, where people liked Ike and loved cars. People weren’t especially concerned with politics, and, if they were, they weren’t especially ideological – it wasn’t the hard-conservative West of today. The Natrona County High School yearbook from Cheney’s senior year lists the winners of the Homemaker of Tomorrow Award, sponsored by Betty Crocker, and the Daughters of the American Revolution Good Citizen award. All the boys had to serve in R.O.T.C., and all the girls wore uniforms. Lynne Vincent, soon to become Lynne Cheney, was the obvious star of the school (and perhaps the first powerful person with whom Dick Cheney formed a bond): she was a state-champion baton twirler, specializing in flaming equipment, and won the high school’s most glorious position, Mustang Queen; Dick promoted her campaign. She, too, was the daughter of a Democratic civil servant (GS-13, Bureau of Reclamation). Cheney’s younger brother, Bob, is a civil servant, too, now retired from the Bureau of Land Management.

One atypical point about Casper was that it was an oil town. It attracted people who wanted to make a lot of money; some were scions of respectable Eastern families who had an adventurous streak. In that sense, Casper was like Midland, Texas, where George W. Bush grew up in a small colony of preppie expats. The Casper version of George H. W. Bush was a man named Thomas Stroock, whose great-great-uncle helped found the venerable New York law firm of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan and who operated an independent oil company called Alpha Exploration. In fact, Tom Stroock was (and still is) a friend of George Bush’s – they were both Yale ’48 – and, like Bush, spent his spare time on Republican politics.

Lynne Vincent, as a high-school student, got a part-time secretarial job in Stroock’s office. She introduced him to her boyfriend, Dick Cheney, who played halfback and outside linebacker and was senior-class president at Natrona County High, and Stroock liked the cut of Cheney’s jib. “In those days, you could do things you can’t do now,” Stroock told me, “so I called Yale and told ’em to take this guy,” along with Natrona County High’s all-state quarterback from the class of ’59, Tom Fake. Yale offered Cheney and Fake full scholarships; in the yearbook there is a picture of the two Stroock-anointed boys, crewcut and grinning, with a caption that says, “Ivy League bound Tom Fake and Dick Cheney show their happiness upon receiving notice of their acceptance by Yale University.”

- The Quiet Man, by Nicholas Lemann, The New Yorker, April 30, 2001.

2. Steve Jobs had the turtleneck. Mark Zuckerberg has the hoodie.

So when Jack Dorsey took the stage in New York City on Thursday in his first public appearance as CEO of both Twitter and Square, all eyes were on Dorsey.

Would the 38-year-old Dorsey, whose stylings have included everything from nose-rings to a scraggly, Rasputin-like beard, unveil a bold, new look to announce his status as one of the tech world's few dual CEOs?

And would that look be too edgy for hidebound investors, many of whom might be getting their first real chance to size the man up and to pass judgment on the cut of his jib?

Dorsey was at the event to discuss new video advertising features, which Twitter hopes will boost revenue. But with Twitter's stock in the doghouse, Dorsey and company could not afford to spook anyone with an outrageous look.

As it turns out, Dorsey opted for a modern, refined style.

The famous facial hair was trimmed back to the point where it was difficult to determine whether it could best be described as a small beard or simple stubble. For a coiffure, Dorsey went with an elegant yet versatile fade.

A pair of mustard-colored high-top sneakers and what may be the skinniest jeans in any executive suite completed the outfit, along with Dorsey’s traditional black crew neck shirt. It’s tough to tell in the photo, but Dorsey is also sporting a watch with an oversized face which may be a smartwatch.

Dorsey has been reputed to be heavily inspired by late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who famously wore the same trademark outfit every day. Now that Dorsey has made his big reveal, will he adhere to it with a similar Jobsian discipline, or move on to the latest fashion?

Perhaps Dorsey’s evolving look is his subtle way of signaling to Wall Street that big changes are in store for Twitter’s product. Just as the man himself has upgraded his appearance from the in-from-the-wild look seen below, so too could Twitter’s interface and user experience undergo a major makeover under his stewardship.

- Jack Dorsey’s beard has nearly disappeared and his jeans are tight – an analysis of the Twitter CEO’s new look, BusinessInsider.com, October 9, 2015.

3. Jeremy Clarkson has issued a damning broadside toward US President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance for their stance on global politics.

The 64-year-old writer and presenter was incensed by Vance’s disparaging comments towards the UK and France concerning peace keeping troops being sent to Ukraine.

Beginning his tirade in The Times, Clarkson reflected on his initial perspective on the US after Trump’s stunning return to the White House.

He recalled liking the “cut of Trump’s jib” in how he aggressively pursued solutions to the transgender sports row, illegal immigration and even the blight of paper straws.

At the time, the 64-year-old mocked celebrities, like actor Robert De Niro, threatening to leave the US after Trump’s victory.

Clarkson even offered to swap homes with De Niro for the duration of Trump’s term, comparing a hypothetical “net-zero, hug-an-immigrant" administration of Kamala Harris as akin to Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s.

However, the former Top Gear presenter’s opinion was changed by the Oval Office fracas between Trump, Vance and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

Clarkson blasted the moment as “despicable.”

- Jeremy Clarkson blasts ‘despicable’ JD Vance and Trump following ‘random countries’ jibe at Britain, GBNews.com, March 9, 2025.

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About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

（作者：张欣）