Cutting (up) Foxy:
This is an odd term you don’t see anymore and I first encountered it in “Crooked Souls” by Dashiell Hammett. The short story was originally published in Black Mask in October, 1923. The story was later reprinted in the May, 1953 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and again in a 1962 collection A Man Named Thin, edited by Fredrick Dannay (who was also one half of the writing/editing team we know as “Ellery Queen.”) With thanks to Don Herron of Dashiell Hammett Tour fame for posting the Ellery Queen connection on his website.
Now, where the term comes from before Hammett put it on paper, I don’t know, though there’s an obvious connection to the idea of foxes as sly or clever.
Cutting (up) Foxy: (v) acting clever.
The term is usually applied with some derision as in “You keep cuttin’ up foxy, and I’m gonna bop you in the beak.” It also shows up as just “cutting foxy” upon occasion. Sadly, I have no further etymology for the term and it’s always possible that Hammett just made it up—he did that from time to time—but it does appear in a few other places through the 1940s, and then disappears. Alas, poor foxy….
