whittle
Syllables: whit·tle/ˈwɪtəl/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
Ireland/ˈʍɪtəl/
whittle noun: a knife; especially, a clasp-knife, pocket knife, or sheath knife.
Noun (1)
whittle (plural whittles)
- A knife; especially, a clasp-knife, pocket knife, or sheath knife.
- Novv if any man can be ſo unkind to his ovvn Body, for I meddle not vvith your Souls, as to ſtand ſtill like a good Chriſtian, and offer his VVeeſon to a Butcher's VVhittle, I ſay no more but that he may be ſav'd, and that's the beſt can come on him.1682 December 15 (first performance; Gregorian calendar), [John] Dryden, [Nathaniel] Lee, The Duke of Guise. A Tragedy. […], London: […] T[homas] H[odgkin] for R[ichard] Bentley […], and J[acob]...
- Rude whittles.1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter III, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and...
Verb
whittle (third-person singular simple present whittles, present participle whittling, simple past and past participle whittled)
- To cut or shape wood with a knife.
- He was sitting on a bench before the fire, with his feet on the stove hearth, and in one hand was holding close up to his face that little negro idol of his; peering hard into its face, and with a jack-knife gently whittling away at its nose, meanwhile humming to himself in his heathenish way.1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter X, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC
- To reduce or gradually eliminate something (such as a debt).
- To make eager or excited; to excite with liquor; to inebriate.
- When men are well whitled, their toungs run at randome1554, John Withals, A Dictionarie in English and Latine
Noun (2)
whittle (plural whittles)
- A covering for a bed; sheet.
- A coarse greyish double blanket worn over the shoulders, like a cloak or shawl.
- Her figure is tall, graceful, and slight; the severity of its outlines suiting well with the severity of her dress, with the brown stuff gown, and plain gray whittle1857, Charles Kingsley, “(please specify the page)”, in Two Years Ago, volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Macmillan and Co., →OCLC
- A kind of fine woollen shawl, originally and especially a white one.
- Synonyms:
- whittle shawl
- A baby's flannel; a baby's woollen napkin; a flannel petticoat.
Proper noun capitalized: Whittle
Whittle (countable and uncountable, plural Whittles)
whittle meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Malayalam and Kannada
whittle in Tamil
- குச்சி, செதுக்கு, இழை, சீவிக் கொஞ்சம் கொஞ்சமாகக் குறை, ஒன்றுமில்லாமலாக்கு, துண்டு துண்டாக நறுக்கு
whittle in Urdu
- بڑا چاقو, آہستہ آہستہ گھٹنا, چاقو سے تراشنا
whittle in Malayalam
- ചെത്തി ചെറുതാക്കുക, നുറുക്കുക, കനം കുറയ്ക്കുക
whittle in Kannada
- ಹೆರೆ, ಕೆತ್ತು
More languagesFewer languages
- whittle in Vietnamese
- vót, gọt
Examples of whittle in a sentence
- With one withering glance, she could whittle my father, who was a big man, down to size.
- A building will derank one level at a time as its hitpoints are whittled away.
- As George whittled the lengthy wood, his tussis nearly cured, he found himself surrounded by curious lads and lasses.
Synonyms of whittle
Forms of whittle
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | whittles |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | whittles |
| present participle | whittling |
| past participle | whittled |
| past | whittled |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Whittles |
Origin of whittle
From Middle English whittel (“large knife”), an alteration of thwitel, itself from thwiten (“to whittle”), from Old English þwītan (“to strike down, whittle”), from Proto-Germanic *þwītaną, possibly from Proto-Indo-European *twey- (“to shake, hurl, toss”). Compare Old Norse þveita (“to hurl”), Ancient Greek σείω (seíō, “I shake”). Related to thwite and thwaite.
From Middle English whytel, from Old English hwītel (“cloak, blanket”), from Proto-West Germanic *hwītil, from Proto-Germanic *hwītilaz, equivalent to white + -le; akin to Icelandic hvítill (“white bedcover, sheet, linen”).
Words formed from whittle
Phrases with whittle
Words that rhyme with whittle
2 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about whittle
- What does whittle mean?
- Whittle means a knife; especially, a clasp-knife, pocket knife, or sheath knife.
- What is whittle in Tamil?
- Whittle in Tamil is குச்சி, செதுக்கு, இழை. See Whittle meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is whittle?
- Whittle can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce whittle?
- Whittle is pronounced /ˈwɪtəl/.
- What is the plural of whittle?
- The plural of whittle is whittles.
Words near whittle in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: whittle (page history and authors); Whittle (page history and authors); whittle (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); whittle (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); whittle (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); whittle (Kannada Wiktionary) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-whittle.ogg.
Cite this entry: “whittle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/whittle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.