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Which one is used more often? You can cut your leg, hand etc. but do you slit or cut your wrists? Is the correct word related to the method of action that causes wrists to bleed?

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"Which one is used more often?" I would think that generally either is done no more than once :) – JeffSahol Nov 18 '12 at 21:11
@JeffSahol That depends, actually. Apparently the latitudinal slashers are more frequent repeat customers than the longitudinal ones. – tchrist Nov 18 '12 at 21:45
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@Kasperi Welcome to ELU! If future, you should know that we prefer that people asking questions like yours should include the results of their own prior investigations into the matter. This saves everyone involved a lot of duplicated effort, because it helps show us what you’ve already discovered—and what you haven’t—and what sort of sticking points remain despite said research. Bill Franke’s investigations into Google N-grams are but one possible approach to this: it has both pros and cons, but at least it’s something. In summary: it would help if you were to show your prior work. – tchrist Nov 18 '12 at 21:53

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1 Answer

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You can cut, slit, or slash your wrists, and the denotations are all the same. A Google Ngram shows that the first two are currently equally popular and the third is only a little less popular.

Each word has different connotations for a careful and caring writer.

An old girlfriend of mine cut her wrists and was hauled off to the U of Iowa's mental hospital about 40 years ago. She used a dull razor blade, made very shallow cuts, and failed to end her life.

Potential suicides who really do want to die usually slit their wrists with a sharp knife or razor blade, and they usually succeed in opening a couple of veins and maybe an artery.

Battered women are often described as having slashed their wrists, which gives the impression that they used a machete, as primitive slash-and-burn farmers did and still do to fell big bushes and small trees.

The level of self-inflicted violence is much higher in the word slash than in the words slit and cut.

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