Cut corners Informal

To do something in the quickest, cheapest, or easiest way possible, usually by skipping steps or standards that should normally be followed.

The phrase almost always carries a negative judgment — it implies that quality, safety, or thoroughness was sacrificed for the sake of speed or cost.

The earliest confirmed appearance is from August 1831, in Baltimore’s “American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine,” where a letter signed “Tandem” praised American coachmen’s skill, noting they could “cut a corner as close as any whip in old England.” The phrase originally described a literal driving technique — steering a horse or carriage as tightly as possible around a bend to save time and distance — and the Oxford English Dictionary’s 1855-56 citation still uses it in that literal sense, of taking a turn dangerously close to the inside edge. Through the 1840s and 1850s the same image spread into boating and fox hunting, describing riders who cut across open ground instead of following the hounds properly. The figurative meaning familiar today, of skipping proper steps to save effort, is first recorded in 1868, in a Yorkshire newspaper’s reference to “cutting the corners” as one of the “less legitimate tricks” of a trade.

The contractor cut corners on the wiring, and now the lights keep flickering.

Don’t cut corners on safety just to finish the project faster.

They cut corners with cheap materials, and the furniture fell apart within a year.

A: “Why did the bridge fail inspection?” B: “The builders cut corners on the foundation.”