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

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The list of Federal Reserve Chair candidates has been whittled down to five from 11, Treasury sources tell CNBC. Alex Harring, CNBC, 10 Oct. 2025 Outside of Europe, several continents across the rest of the world are still whittling down their candidates for the 2026 World Cup finals. Jack Bantock, New York Times, 10 Oct. 2025 In the last three years, the newsroom’s bargaining unit has been whittled down from around 450 to a little more than 200 members. Katie Kilkenny, HollywoodReporter, 9 Oct. 2025 To whittle down the field, the IBM team developed chemical foundation models trained on billions of molecules. Andrew Moseman, IEEE Spectrum, 1 Oct. 2025 See All Example Sentences for whittle down

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“Whittle down.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/whittle%20down. Accessed 20 Oct. 2025.

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