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I couldn't find an agreement online on which form of "cut out" is the most correct as a noun.

It would be interesting to know about any British English and U.S. English distinction as well.

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    The online dictionaries I can see prefer cut-out (to disambiguate from the verb cut out). Oxford gives cutout as an alternative, though my spellchecker doesn't like it!
    – Kate Bunting
    Commented May 26, 2022 at 12:48

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Since you are referring to a single entity, "cut out" is a poor choice. "Cutout" is correct. According to Google, there is no word "cut-out". But it is my personal policy that when I am unsure if a compound word is valid then I am bold and unafraid to use a hyphenated form, for when doing so there is little doubt that the reader will know precisely what I mean.

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  • Thanks this actually clears it up for me. Easy and wonderful explanation.
    – Alex F.
    Commented May 28, 2022 at 11:21
  • If this answers your question, you should accept it by clicking the "green tick".
    – James K
    Commented May 28, 2022 at 11:40
  • Done. Ngram proves the "cardboard cutout" form to be most widely used too. Google Ngram Viewer
    – Alex F.
    Commented May 28, 2022 at 11:48
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The reason that you can't find any consensus is that no consensus exists.

Feel free to choose. Ngrams suggests that "cutout" is several times more common than cut out or cut-out.

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  • Thank you so much. I have attempted a similar comparison with the Open iWeb Corpus Dictionary and the results diverge with Ngram: - Cut-out: 12379 entries - Cutout 17923 entries - Cut out: 131402 entries With "Cut Out" being the most used. english-corpora.org/iweb
    – Alex F.
    Commented May 28, 2022 at 11:14
  • Did you use "cardboard cut out" as the search? There are several other meanings of "cut out" that would pollute your results: The engine cut out when I ran out of fuel" for example or "Cut out the pattern with scissors" @AlexF.
    – James K
    Commented May 28, 2022 at 11:37
  • Good point. "cardboard cutout" it's the most widely use according to iWeb too. Thanks for the tip, and thanks for letting me discover Ngram. Extremely useful tool!
    – Alex F.
    Commented May 28, 2022 at 11:51

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