A Diamond cutter is the term used to describe a worker that polishes diamonds. Diamond polishing takes place in stages and a different specialist is in charge of every one of these stages. As such, diamond production workers are given the name of their specialty: Spotter, Sawer, Splitter, Cutter and Polisher.
However, the word cutter is also a general word and therefore this term is given to every person that is involved in the various stages of polishing, whether they are experts in all aspects of polishing or whether their work is specific to one aspect of polishing.
In Hebrew, diamond cutters are referred to as diamond polishers. But in English, a diamond polisher refers to actually polishing the stone, only one of the long set of steps that make up diamond cutting. Diamond Industry veterans in Israel tend to continue to refer to cutters as “schleifer”, which originates from the Yiddish language.
By Shalom Lissitzky, author of Talking Diamonds
