boil down

boiled down; boiling down; boils down

Definition of boil down

transitive verb

1 : to reduce in bulk by boiling

2 : condense, summarize boil down a report

intransitive verb

1 : to undergo reduction in bulk by boiling

2a : to be equivalent in summary : amount his speech boiled down to a plea for more money

b : to reduce ultimately your choices boil down to three

Synonyms More Example Sentences Learn More about boil down

Keep scrolling for more

Examples of boil down in a Sentence

the discussion of the problem can be boiled down to a couple of critical points

Recent Examples on the Web The qualities that seem to make for a good N.F.L. player, as opposed to someone who excelled in college, had been boiled down to a handful of traits: speed, strength, athleticism, intelligence, poise. — Rich Cohen, Harper's magazine, "The Wood Chipper," 19 Aug. 2019 As TechHive’s Michael Brown has noted, the differences between HDMI and DisplayPort boil down to this: HDMI was designed primarily for consumer electronics applications: Blu-ray players, TVs, and video projectors. — Mark Hachman, PCWorld, "DisplayPort 2.0 launches, promising 8K video support by late 2020," 26 June 2019 The complexity of many computational problems, from calculating new digits of pi to finding large prime numbers, boils down to the speed of multiplication. — Wired, "Mathematicians Discover the Perfect Way to Multiply," 14 Apr. 2019 That’s what this game boiled down to — mistake after mistake. — Los Angeles Times, "The Sports Report: Rams win, Chargers lose," 16 Sep. 2019 The dispute boils down to this: GM has been highly profitable since emerging from the Great Recession, and now that the company is healthy, workers want a bigger slice. — Washington Post, "AP Explains: Why auto workers went on strike against GM," 16 Sep. 2019 Many of the worries about indexing really boil down to career risk in the asset management space. — Ben Carlson, Fortune, "Yes, Passive Investing Has Exploded. But Here’s Why Fears of a Bubble are Overblown," 14 Sep. 2019 The longstanding reason to look past the carriers boils down to one word: unlocked. — Rob Pegoraro, USA TODAY, "$21 says you don’t have to buy a new iPhone from your carrier," 12 Sep. 2019 However, the game could boil down to a matchup of top running backs. — Ben Thomas | Bthomas@al.com, al, "Top RBs square off as Jordon Ingram, St. Paul’s host Jarris Williams, No. 7 Blount," 12 Sep. 2019

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'boil down.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Keep scrolling for more

Learn More about boil down

Dictionary Entries near boil down

Boileau-Despréaux

boiled-off silk

Statistics for boil down

Last Updated

4 Nov 2019

Time Traveler for boil down

The first known use of boil down was in 1723

See more words from the same year

WORD OF THE DAY

officious

meddlesome, informal, or unofficial

Test Your Vocabulary

Pass the Little Ribbons: A Pasta Word Quiz

Match the pasta to its meaning in English: Rotelle

Can you spell these 10 commonly misspelled words?

Test Your Knowledge - and learn some interesting things along the way.