The third gentleman now stepped forth. A mighty man at cutting and drying, he was; a government officer; in his way (and in most other people’s too), a professed pugilist; always in training, always with a system to force down the general throat like a bolus, always to be heard of at the bar of his little Public-office, ready to fight all England.

The paragraph is from HARD TIMES by Charles Dickens. I would like to know what does " A mighty man at cutting and drying" here mean. Thanks.

Question

The third gentleman now stepped forth. A mighty man at cutting and drying, he was; a government officer; in his way (and in most other people’s too), a professed pugilist; always in training, always with a system to force down the general throat like a bolus, always to be heard of at the bar of his little Public-office, ready to fight all England.

The paragraph is from HARD TIMES by Charles Dickens. I would like to know what does " A mighty man at cutting and drying" here mean. Thanks.

Answer

Well, it's quite a creative sentence, because you won't see it elsewhere. If something is cut-and-dried, it means that it is planned in advance and lacking spontaneity. "A master at cutting and drying" is a creative way to say the he likes this way of doing things. It seems this man is very rigid and bureaucratic - he wants everyone to follow his system. The writer doesn't seem to like him!