Word.ws English Dictionary

whittling down

whittling down is the present participle and gerund 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 whittling down

What is whittling down the present participle and gerund of?
Whittling down is the present participle and gerund of whittle down.

Words near whittling down in the dictionary

  1. Whittlesey
  2. Whittleseys
  3. Whittlesford
  4. Whittlestone
  5. whittling
  6. whittling down
  7. whittling down to size
  8. whittling the whalebone
  9. whittlings
  10. Whittock
  11. Whittocks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whittling 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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Cite this entry: “whittling down.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/whittling_down. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.