Word.ws English Dictionary

cut down to size

cut down to size verb: to humble or humiliate, especially someone or something that is perceived as overly domineering or too proud.

Verb

cut down to size (third-person singular simple present cuts down to size, present participle cutting down to size, simple past and past participle cut down to size)

  1. (idiomatic, informal) To humble or humiliate, especially someone or something that is perceived as overly domineering or too proud.
    • The war was seen by the Foreign Office as a golden opportunity to undo the UN Partition Resolution and cut Israel down to size'.2000, Efraim Karsh, Fabricating Israeli History: The "new Historians", page 152
    • The system cut everybody down to size. I felt small and vulnerable.2003, Gordon Donnell, Starliner, page 10
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see cut, down, size.
    • There is, however, another general approach to cutting the potential client population down to size: establish criteria, grounded in the Bank's basic strategy, that restrict the range of enterprises that the Bank tries to reach.1995, Sidney Winter, Small and Medium-size Enterprises in Economic Development
    • As the plastic moves between the stationary and rotating blades it is cut down to size.2007, Vannessa Goodship, Introduction to Plastics Recycling, page 55

Synonyms of cut down to size

Forms of cut down to size

third-person singular presentcuts down to size
present participlecutting down to size
past participlecut down to size
pastcut down to size

Questions about cut down to size

What does cut down to size mean?
Cut down to size means to humble or humiliate, especially someone or something that is perceived as overly domineering or too proud.
What part of speech is cut down to size?
Cut down to size is a verb.
What is the past tense of cut down to size?
The past tense of cut down to size is cut down to size.

Words near cut down to size in the dictionary

  1. cut corners
  2. cut crease
  3. cut deeper than a knife
  4. cut down
  5. cut down the tall poppy
  6. cut down to size
  7. cut fastball
  8. cut fastballs
  9. cut for sign
  10. cut from the same cloth
  11. cut glass

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cut down to size (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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