cutover

cut +‎ over

cutover (not comparable)

1. Having been cleared of valuable timber.

cutover (countable and uncountable, plural cutovers)

1. An area of cutover land.
2. The discontinuity that occurs when switching from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar.
3. The process of quickly replacing a telephone switchboard, in which the connections are duplicated to the new machine and the original connections are then suddenly disconnected.
   • 1913: Bell Telephone News, vol. 2, no. 7, page 18

     After the heat coils were pulled on the old main frame, the remaining step was merely to pull the wooden plugs on the new switchboard by the strings attached to them (which are bunched together) upon a signal given from the old terminal room, indicating the removal of the heat coils above mentioned. By this means the cut-over was accomplished almost momentarily, the process occupying not over two seconds’ time.

4. (by extension) Any process of quickly replacing a machine so as to minimize downtime.

• couvert, overcut