Polyhymnia · Daily Eloquencecut to the chase
Skip the preamble and get straight to the important part.
It enacts its own demand — four clipped syllables that waste no time telling you to stop wasting time.
The film-editing metaphor has gone invisible (nobody pictures a literal splice or a car chase anymore), so it reads as plain instruction rather than flourish.
And the imperative 'cut' lends a friendly bossiness: it hurries you along without the sting of 'get on with it.'
“Look, I love the buildup, but cut to the chase — did we get the apartment or not?”
A roommate dragging out the story of how the rental application went.
“We've got ten minutes left, so let me cut to the chase: are we launching Friday?”
A project lead steering a meeting that has run past its time.
It's an imperative, so aimed at someone senior or a sensitive client it can read as impatient — soften it to 'mind if I cut to the chase?' Lean on it too often and you start to sound like every preamble bores you.
'Cut to the chase' is the rare command nobody resents: it hurries you along by hurrying itself.
▸More — where it lives, variations, references
A relic of silent-era Hollywood, where a script would literally cut to the chase scene — the part the audience actually came for.
The line lands on 'chase' — letting the stress fall on that last beat gives the phrase its snap.
- · get to the point
- · cut to it
- · long story short
- · skip to the good part