whittle away

1. 1.

   cut away in small pieces

   Synonymswhittle downwear away

   Broaderdamage

Questions about whittle away

What does whittle away mean?

whittle away means "cut away in small pieces".

What is another word for whittle away?

Close synonyms include whittle down, wear away. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is whittle away a common word?

whittle away is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.