You once cut many hundreds (4)
I believe the answer is:
thou
'you once' is the definition.
(historical second person pronoun)
'cut many hundreds' is the wordplay.
'cut' means to remove the last letter.
'many hundreds' becomes 'thous' (thou is short for a thousand).
'thous' with its last letter taken off is 'THOU'.
(Other definitions for thou that I've seen before include "You, in olden times" , "You (many years ago)" , "Subject" , "Archaic form of you" , "once paired with art" .)