Word.ws English Dictionary

whittles down

whittles down is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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 whittles down

What is whittles down the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Whittles down is the third-person singular simple present indicative of whittle down.

Words near whittles down in the dictionary

  1. whittled down to size
  2. whittled the whalebone
  3. whittler
  4. whittlers
  5. whittles
  6. whittles down
  7. whittles down to size
  8. whittles the whalebone
  9. Whittlesea
  10. Whittlesey
  11. Whittleseys

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whittles 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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