cut a tape

vi.

To write a software or document distribution on magnetic tape for shipment. Has nothing to do with physically cutting the medium! Early versions of this lexicon claimed that one never analogously speaks of ‘cutting a disk’, but this has since been reported as live usage. Related slang usages are mainstream business’s ‘cut a check’, the recording industry’s ‘cut a record’, and the military’s ‘cut an order’.

All of these usages reflect physical processes in obsolete recording and duplication technologies. The first stage in manufacturing an old-style vinyl record involved cutting grooves in a stamping die with a precision lathe. More mundanely, the dominant technology for mass duplication of paper documents in pre-photocopying days involved “cutting a stencil”, punching away portions of the wax overlay on a silk screen. More directly, paper tape with holes punched in it was an important early storage medium. See also burn a CD.