"whittle down" meaning in All languages combined

See whittle down on Wiktionary

Verb [English]

Forms: whittles down [present, singular, third-person], whittling down [participle, present], whittled down [participle, past], whittled down [past]
Head templates: {{en-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. Tags: transitive Derived forms: whittle down to size

Inflected forms

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "whittles down",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "whittling down",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "whittled down",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "whittled down",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "whittle down (third-person singular simple present whittles down, present participle whittling down, simple past and past participle whittled down)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English phrasal verbs formed with \"down\"",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "derived": [
        {
          "word": "whittle down to size"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2023 March 30, Carlotta Gall, “Ukrainians in a Hidden Command Post See Bakhmut Going Their Way”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:",
          "text": "To Ukraine, it has become an important line to hold, both to whittle down Russia’s forces and to deprive them of a victory.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To reduce gradually by removing pieces."
      ],
      "id": "en-whittle_down-en-verb-AWq9ufhS",
      "links": [
        [
          "reduce",
          "reduce"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(transitive) To reduce gradually by removing pieces."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "transitive"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "whittle down"
}
{
  "derived": [
    {
      "word": "whittle down to size"
    }
  ],
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "whittles down",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "whittling down",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "whittled down",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "whittled down",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "whittle down (third-person singular simple present whittles down, present participle whittling down, simple past and past participle whittled down)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English phrasal verbs",
        "English phrasal verbs formed with \"down\"",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English transitive verbs",
        "English verbs",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2023 March 30, Carlotta Gall, “Ukrainians in a Hidden Command Post See Bakhmut Going Their Way”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:",
          "text": "To Ukraine, it has become an important line to hold, both to whittle down Russia’s forces and to deprive them of a victory.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To reduce gradually by removing pieces."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "reduce",
          "reduce"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(transitive) To reduce gradually by removing pieces."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "transitive"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "whittle down"
}

Download raw JSONL data for whittle down meaning in All languages combined (1.4kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-11-21 using wiktextract (95d2be1 and 64224ec). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.