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Cutty sark is 18th century Scots for "short shirt": cutty (a cognate of the English language word cut) is "short, stumpy"; sark (from Old English serce "shirt") is a chemise, undergarment or nightshirt (the English word skirt, a doublet, is also of this derivation). Hyphenated, Cutty-sark was a nickname for a fictional character invented by Robert Burns, and from there has become part of an idiom in colloquial English, especially Scottish English.

In Burns' poem Tam o' Shanter, the drunken Tam happens upon a witches' ceilidh. Among the dancing figures is a particularly beautiful young witch named Nanny (Scots pet-form of Anna), "ae winsome wench and wawlie" (line 164). She is wearing a sark which fitted her as a child but is now rather too short for her:

Her cutty sark, o' Paisley harn,

That while a lassie she had worn,

In longtitude tho' sorely scanty,

It was her best, and she was vauntie.

Ah! little kend thy reverend grannie

That sark she coft for her wee Nannie

Wi' twa pund Scots ('twas a' her riches)

Wad ever graced a dance of witches! (lines 171ff)

harn, "linnen"; vauntie, "joyous, boasting"; kend, "knew"; coft, "bought".

Tam is so enthralled by the erotic spectacle that he cannot contain himself and yells out "Weel done, Cutty-sark!" (189). The witches are now alerted to his presence and pursue him to the river, but he makes it across the bridge to safety, though not before Nannie, the "Cutty-sark" has torn the tail from his horse. The poem ends ironically with a mock warning to all men of the devilish consequences of thinking about scantily clad females.

The popularity of this poem was such that the phrase Well done, Cutty-sark! entered the English language via Scottish English as an exclamation similar to "Bravo!"

Cutty Sark (usually with a capital S) was also borrowed in a variety of contexts for names of cultural entities and products, most famously a tea clipper and a Scotch whisky. See:

• Cutty Sark: a British sailing ship, built 1869 in Scotland (by coincidence, the highest and smallest sail on a square rigged ship such as the Cutty Sark was called the "Ladies Pantalettes")
• Saro Cutty Sark: a British flying boat of the 1920s.
• Cutty Sark (whisky): a Scotch whisky, founded in 1923; named after the clipper ship. The Tall Ships' Races were formerly called the Cutty Sark Tall Ships' Races under sponsorship by the whisky company.
• Cutty Sark (band): a German heavy metal band which produced its first record in 1984.

Besides these, hotels, pubs, sports clubs and social clubs around the world have taken the words Cutty Sark into their names. In Scotland and areas with a strong Scottish ex-pat community, these are typically references to the poem; elsewhere they are more likely to be thinking of the ship.

Literary allusions to the original Cutty-sark abound. In Ulysses, James Joyce writes: "Laughing witches in red cutty sarks ride through the air on broom sticks" (p.695). Additionally, characters in Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle drink cutty sark.