Why Dragonflies Are Such Incredible Flyers

What does “cut it off at the pass” mean in English?

When you “cut something off at the pass,” you move to where a problem is going — not where it is now — so you can stop it before it arrives. The phrase comes from old Western movies, where riders blocked an enemy at a narrow mountain pass. Today people use it in conversation and business to mean any smart early move that prevents trouble.

In the clip, a scientist explains why dragonflies are such deadly hunters. She says they don’t fly straight at their prey. Instead, “they fly to where their prey will be, and they kind of cut it off at the pass.” The dragonfly goes to where the prey is headed and stops it there — which is exactly what the idiom means: see where something is going, and get there first. You hear this a lot in everyday English. A manager might say, “Let’s cut this off at the pass before it becomes a real problem” — meaning: act now, before things get worse. A parent might say, “I saw the argument coming, so I cut it off at the pass.” The phrase is informal. It works well in spoken English and casual writing, but you would not use it in a formal report. It started in American English but is widely understood across English-speaking countries.