SKIVING Synonyms: 25 Similar and Opposite Words

skiving

verb

present participle of skive

as in whittling

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Recent Examples of Synonyms for skiving

Verb

The film eventually ballooned to six hours before Gibney began whittling it back.

— Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 6 Oct. 2026
Voters set up races for four Orange County commission seats in November by whittling casts of candidates to two in districts 2, 6, 7 and 8.

— Stephen Hudak, The Orlando Sentinel, 19 Aug. 2026

Definition of whittling

Verb

Like almost winning a race, almost shaving a second off my time for the 3200m run, my event in high school, the one that got me into college, a recruit for someone else to gamble on.

— Literary Hub, Literary Hub, 15 Oct. 2026
The point-shaving scheme resulted in more than $3 million in fraudulent wagers.

— ABC News, ABC News, 13 Oct. 2026

Definition of shaving

Verb

As a member of the mint family, horehound has the tendency to spread aggressively, but this can be prevented by shearing the inconspicuous flowers, which is also done to expose the evergreen foliage.

— Nadia Hassani, The Spruce, 6 Sep. 2026
Cut individual branches rather than shearing the shrub like a hedge.

— Karen Brewer Grossman, Southern Living, 31 Aug. 2026

Definition of shearing

Verb

States can help by pruning occupational licensing requirements and making credentials modular and stackable, so short qualifications add up into longer ones.

— Eric Kutcher, Fortune, 11 Oct. 2026
It’s been a dynamic year with a varied complexion of transactions, from mega-mergers to portfolio pruning through corporate divestitures.

— Kathryn Hopkins, Footwear News, 9 Oct. 2026

Definition of pruning

Verb

Leslie took issue with a recent stunt Kennedy had pulled at the hospital, which involved making a surprise appearance for a ribbon-cutting ceremony to open his signature vaccine injury clinic.

— Beth Mole, ArsTechnica, 23 Oct. 2026
Stephanie Keith | Bloomberg | Getty Images American Express is cutting thousands of employees as the leading credit card company prepares for artificial intelligence to take over more of its internal processes.

— Hugh Son, CNBC, 23 Oct. 2026

Definition of cutting

Verb

In other stock markets abroad, indexes in Europe dipped after paring bigger losses from earlier in the day.

— Stan Choe, Los Angeles Times, 20 Oct. 2026
Since their debut in 1986, American Girl has shrunk their historical line significantly–including paring down the traditional six-book set for each historical character into two streamlined texts.

— Literary Hub, Literary Hub, 5 Oct. 2026

Definition of paring

Verb

The younger Bolsonaro's other proposals include trimming the size of the Brazilian state to boost economic growth.

— Carrie Kahn, NPR, 23 Oct. 2026
But new technologies are opening the door to transition a portion of the inputs from petrochemicals to plants, trimming the environmental impact of these fibers.

— Fairchild Studio, Footwear News, 20 Oct. 2026

Definition of trimming

Verb

The photo editing tools are also limited to basic actions like cropping and rotating.

— Jordan Minor, PC Magazine, 14 Sep. 2026
Meta released its Content Seal AI watermark recently, but Reuters found that simply cropping the images a bit would often eliminate the watermark.

— ArsTechnica, ArsTechnica, 29 July 2026

Definition of cropping

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Browse Nearby Words

skives

skiving

skivvies

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“Skiving.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/skiving. Accessed 26 Oct. 2026.

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Synonyms of skiving

verb

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