Martin Gansten said:

I have been trying, so far without success, to understand the etymology of kṣut or kṣuta . . ., and I haven't yet been able to locate the word in a Hindi dictionary

Enter kṣut in the on-line Turner's A Comparative dictionary of the Indo-aryan languages at http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/soas/

make sure the option "entry words only " is not selected.

select options" words starting with" and display options "I have a unicode font installed

Harry Spier