Cut a figure of confidence?

Reader question:

Please explain “cut a figure of confidence” in this:

To say he cut a figure of confidence is an understatement. This was a cocky, pugnacious guy.

My comments:

To cut a figure of confidence is to look confident.

He, whoever that is, was more than confident, of course. He was cocky and pugnacious.

Cocky and pugnacious give us two vivid pictures.

Cocky is how the male chicken carries itself, holding its head high and, in fact, cocking a snook at everything it sees.

Pugnacious, on the other hand, gives us the image of the cocky boxer also known as the pugilist, which is the root of the word pugnacious, meaning eager and quick to argue, quarrel and fight.

Pugilist, by the way, comes from the Latin “pugil” and “pugnus” (meaning fist). As we know, in the old days, boxers fought not with gloves but with their knuckles, bare knuckles.

Anyways, the pugilist is always ready to quarrel and fight, probably believing he’s the best in the world.

This reminds me of a famous quote from Muhamad Ali, who arguably is the greatest boxer that ever lived. Back in the day, half a century ago, actually, in 1975, Muhamad Ali fought Joe Frazier in Manila, the capital city of the Philippines.

Before the fight, Ali described the bout to the press in his own deliciously poetic way thus: “It will be a killa (killer), a thrilla (thriller), a chilla (chiller) when I get that gorilla in Manila.”

That “gorilla”, of course, referred to Joe Frazier.

That fight has since been known as the “Thrilla in Manila”. Talking about cocky and confident, not to mention offensively derisive on that occasion, Ali remains The Greatest.

In other words, Ali cut a figure of confidence that was without compare.

Which leads us back to the phrase “cut a figure” of this quality and that.

This phrase apparently comes from observing tailors at work. Literally, tailors cut pieces of cloth into figures of different shapes and sizes in order to fit onto customers. If the customer is lean, the tailor cuts a figure that’s trim and slim. If the customer is fat, the tailor cuts a figure that’s baggy and large.

Hence, figuratively, if someone cuts a figure of confidence, they appear and look that way – confident.

Likewise, if they cut a sorry or despondent figure, they appear and look that way – sorry and despondent.

All in a conspicuous and distinguishable way.

That’s it.

Let’s read a few media examples for greater clarity:

1. Queen Elizabeth II has arrived at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle to say goodbye to her husband of 73 years, Prince Philip.

The monarch wiped away tears as she accompanied the Duke of Edinburgh who made his final journey in a specialised Land Rover hearse.

She arrived at the church as the Grand National played and in a poignant moment, the royal Bentley stopped beside Prince Philip’s coffin.

The 94-year-old monarch cut a figure of dignified grace as she wore a long black button coat, a black bag and a hat with a black and white face mask. She accessorised it with a pair of diamond and pearl earrings, her triple-strand pearl necklaces and Queen Mary’s diamond and pearl Richmond brooch which she also wore to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding.

The Queen sat alone at the front of the church as a minute’s silence was held for the late royal.

There will be no eulogy or sermon at the toned-down ceremony and no members of the royal family will be giving readings.

Tributes are flooding in for the monarch on the sombre day with many taking to social media to express their sadness at seeing the Queen sitting all alone.

Maia Dunphy wrote on Twitter: ‘I know she had to be seen to be observing the rules (because there’s always one), but surely someone in her bubble could have sat with her. No matter who you are, this is a heartbreaking image.’

- Queen Elizabeth sits alone at Prince Philip’s funeral, Evoke.ie, April 17, 2021.

2. David Bowie was, if anything, an original and the very definition of “the innovator.” Not only was the one of the most radical performers of his generation – a man who made glam fab – he was also a radical business person. He defied expectations and was able to repeatedly cut a singular figure across a wide variety of musical genres and film. I, for one, will never forget his turn as a vampire in the 1983 British erotic horror film The Hunger… or the hundred times as a teenager I was left feeling vaguely unsettled by an androgynous David Bowie poster hanging on a friend’s bedroom wall.

But all the celebrations of David Bowie’s life that are circulating on the internet – including a list of his 100 favorite books – one thing worth remembering is that Bowie was not just innovative with his art, he was also innovative with his money. It was Bowie we can thank for the creation of the “Bowie Bond” – or “celebrity bond” – which enabled a creator to leverage their future earnings by using existing intellectual property as a form of collateral. Or, if you want to think of it as a worst case scenario, you might think it as a reverse mortgage for intellectual property.

The “Bowie Bond” pioneered in 1997, when investment banker David Pullman helped Bowie raise $55 million. As the Wall Street Journal puts it, “When the singer came to Mr. Pullman’s midtown Manhattan office, the banker suggested a novel piece of financial engineering: Direct the future stream of earnings from his first 25 albums into a segregated financial vehicle, then use it as collateral for a bond – signing away the rights to his music, but only temporarily.” The terms were 7.9% interest for 10 years, and the rights to the songs then went back to Bowie.

What’s more, his timing was uncanny. He raised the cash just as digital downloads and piracy were to gut the record industry. He was also prescient just five years later, he told the New York Times that the erosion of copyright which would likely turn music from an asset into a commodity. (Later, David Pullman is said to forged a similar deal for the estate of John Steinbeck, though that estate also suffered numerous legal challenges over the years.)

- What Publishers Can Learn from David Bowie’s Legacy, by Edward Nawotka, PublishingPerspectives.com, January 12, 2016.

3. Henry A. Kissinger, the scholar-turned-diplomat who engineered the United States’ opening to China, negotiated its exit from Vietnam, and used cunning, ambition and intellect to remake American power relationships with the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, sometimes trampling on democratic values to do so, died on Wednesday at his home in Kent, Conn. He was 100.

His death was announced in a statement by his consulting firm.

Few diplomats have been both celebrated and reviled with such passion as Mr. Kissinger. Considered the most powerful secretary of state in the post-World War II era, he was by turns hailed as an ultrarealist who reshaped diplomacy to reflect American interests and denounced as having abandoned American values, particularly in the arena of human rights, if he thought it served the nation’s purposes.

He advised 12 presidents – more than a quarter of those who have held the office – from John F. Kennedy to Joseph R. Biden Jr. With a scholar’s understanding of diplomatic history, a German-Jewish refugee’s drive to succeed in his adopted land, a deep well of insecurity and a lifelong Bavarian accent that sometimes added an indecipherable element to his pronouncements, he transformed almost every global relationship he touched.

At a critical moment in American history and diplomacy, he was second in power only to President Richard M. Nixon. He joined the Nixon White House in January 1969 as national security adviser and, after his appointment as secretary of state in 1973, kept both titles, a rarity. When Nixon resigned, he stayed on under President Gerald R. Ford.

Mr. Kissinger’s secret negotiations with what was then still called Red China led to Nixon’s most famous foreign policy accomplishment. Intended as a decisive Cold War move to isolate the Soviet Union, it carved a pathway for the most complex relationship on the globe, between countries that at Mr. Kissinger’s death were the world’s largest (the United States) and second-largest economies, completely intertwined and yet constantly at odds as a new Cold War loomed.

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At the height of his power, Mr. Kissinger cut a figure that no Washington diplomat has matched since. The pudgy, short Harvard professor with nerdy black glasses was seen in the Washington neighborhood of Georgetown and Paris with starlets on his arm, joking that “power is the greatest aphrodisiac.”

In New York restaurants with the actress Jill St. John, he would hold hands or run his fingers through her hair, giving gossip columnists a field day. In fact, as Ms. St. John told biographers, the relationship had been close but platonic.

So were others. One woman who dated him and returned to his small rented apartment on the edge of Rock Creek Park in Washington – with its single bed for sleeping and another that held a mass of laundry – reported that between the mess and the presence of aides, “you couldn’t do anything romantic in that place even if you were dying to.”

The joke in Washington was that Mr. Kissinger flaunted his private life to hide what he was doing at the office.

There was plenty to hide, notably the secret meetings in Beijing that carved out Nixon’s opening to China. When the turn toward China ultimately became public, it changed the strategic calculus of American diplomacy and shocked American allies.

“It’s almost impossible to imagine what the American relationship with the world’s most important rising power would look like today without Henry,” Graham Allison, a Harvard professor who once worked for Mr. Kissinger, said in an interview in 2016.

- Henry Kissinger Is Dead at 100; Shaped the Nation’s Cold War History, NYTimes.com, November 29, 2023.

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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）