whittle down

1. 1.

   cut away in small pieces

   Synonymswhittle awaywear away

   Broaderdamage

Questions about whittle down

What does whittle down mean?

whittle down means "cut away in small pieces".

What is another word for whittle down?

Close synonyms include whittle away, 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 down a common word?

whittle down 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.