whittle away
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.83 in modern English
23
Scrabble Score
11
Letters
3
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "what little remained of his self-confidence was slowly whittling away"
- "she sat in the living-room and cried most of the time, while Boo slowly whittled away all the furniture in the house"
- "A building will derank one level at a time as its hitpoints are whittled away. So, while it may seem that the life bar is at its end, attackers need to take into account if they are merely deranking the building by one or whether they have taken it down to Rank1 and are about to destroy the building."
- "He hopes in time to 'whittle away at the scare quotes [around 'serious drama'], to unhedge the bets, and to justify the claim that the tradition of television drama I am concerned with is serious in particular ways'."
- "People like Dick Advocaat, who knew hee-haw about Scottish football's history, set about whittling away little bits of our tradition on the grounds... well, let's be honest, that they were an inconvenience."
Usage
Inflected Forms
whittles away (present, singular)
whittling away (participle, present)
whittled away (participle, past)
whittled away (past)