Word.ws English Dictionary

boils down

boils down is the third-person singular simple present indicative of boil down.

Meaning of boil down

Verb

boil down (third-person singular simple present boils down, present participle boiling down, simple past and past participle boiled down)

  1. (intransitive, transitive) To reduce in volume by boiling.
    • He boiled the soup down so it wouldn't be so weak.
  2. (intransitive) To become reduced (to the most central elements or ingredients: to the essence, core, or implication for action).
    • So what this boils down to is that you still owe me that fifty bucks.
    Synonyms:
    come down to
  3. (transitive) To reduce (to the most central elements or ingredients: to the essence, core, or implication for action).
    • My dissertation is 342 pages long, and I'm required to boil it down to a one-page abstract?!

Questions about boils down

What is boils down the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Boils down is the third-person singular simple present indicative of boil down.

Words near boils down in the dictionary

  1. boiloffs
  2. boilover
  3. boilovers
  4. boils
  5. boils away
  6. boils down
  7. boils off
  8. boils over
  9. boils someone's piss
  10. boils the ocean
  11. boils up

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: boils down (page history and authors); boil down (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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