Word.ws English Dictionary

whittled down

whittled down is the simple past and past participle of whittle down.

Meaning of whittle down

Verb

whittle down (third-person singular simple present whittles down, present participle whittling down, simple past and past participle whittled down)

  1. (transitive) To reduce gradually by removing pieces.
    • Only simple men can see the logic in whatever smarter men can whittle down till you can fit it on a sticker.2015, Mike Cooley, “Made Up English Oceans”, in English Oceans, performed by Drive-By Truckers

Questions about whittled down

What is whittled down the simple past and past participle of?
Whittled down is the simple past and past participle of whittle down.

Words near whittled down in the dictionary

  1. Whittle likelihood
  2. Whittle likelihoods
  3. whittle the whalebone
  4. Whittle-le-Woods
  5. whittled
  6. whittled down
  7. whittled down to size
  8. whittled the whalebone
  9. whittler
  10. whittlers
  11. whittles

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whittled down (page history and authors); whittle 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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