whittling
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English
Verb
whittling
- present participle and gerund of whittle
Noun
whittling (plural whittlings)
- (usually in the plural) A chip or shaving whittled from some larger substance.
- The art of carving shapes out of raw wood using a knife.
- Coordinate terms: woodcarving, wood carving
- A process of repeatedly shaving slivers from a piece of wood (non-artistic).
- (figurative, by extension) The reducing of something by degrees, especially at the expense of some effort.
- a whittling down
- 1988, Alexander Cockburn, Corruptions of Empire: Life Studies and the Reagan Era (Haymarket Series), Verso, →ISBN:
- Result: nothing would prevent the rapid destruction of the Deco District. Already the developers are calling for a whittling down of the original square mile to a few blocks. The few blocks will no doubt be whittled down to one building, and in the end all that will be left will be a Deco mailbox well pissed on by the local dogs. In another era it was called salami tactics.