whittle down

phrasal verb

whittled down; whittling down; whittles down

: to gradually make (something) smaller by removing parts

We whittled the list down to four people.

Examples of whittle down in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The remaining people were whittled down through questioning from lawyers and Merchan. —Graham Kates, CBS News, 18 Apr. 2024

Fans, genre advisory boards and music business professionals (including Chuck D. and Jason Moran) submit considerations, with the latter two whittling down the list to 50; Hayden then selects the final 25. —David Browne, Rolling Stone, 16 Apr. 2024

The show, which has currently whittled down its competition of aspiring artists to the top 24, will run until Sunday, May 19. —Sadie Bell, Peoplemag, 8 Apr. 2024

Reaching Augusta is an enormous feat; there are three qualifiers, with the final fields whittled down to a mere 10 for each age category. —Tod Leonard, San Diego Union-Tribune, 4 Apr. 2024

Lloyd whittled down to a seven-player core that arguably wore down last season, losing three times in its final six regular-season games and getting bounced in the first round of the NCAA Tournament loss by Princeton. —Bruce Pascoe, The Arizona Republic, 12 Jan. 2024

That’s enabled by some spectacular mathematics around gear-wheel geometries: For the wheels involved, the team whittled down 22 trillion combinations for the proportions, number, and shape of the teeth to find a solution (using a dedicated computer simulation). —Jeremy White, WIRED, 11 Apr. 2024

State departments could lose some funding for personnel and operations this fiscal year as California leaders try to whittle down spending and deliver a balanced state budget. —Maya Miller, Sacramento Bee, 26 Mar. 2024

This is always the cruelest category, in which all of international cinema is whittled down to five nominees. —Jake Coyle and Lindsey Bahr, San Diego Union-Tribune, 8 Mar. 2024