How to Use whittle away in a Sentence

whittle away

verb
  • Lifting them up puts more money back into the economy, but both draft budgets whittle away at programs to help them.
    — Sun Sentinel Editorial Board, Sun Sentinel, 11 Apr. 2026
  • The utopia was temporary, its beauty and its small victories whittled away by the scythe of inaction.
    — Hanif Abdurraqib, New Yorker, 17 Apr. 2026
  • One Fort Worth man whittled away a few blocks of ice to turn it into a truly Texas masterpiece.
    — Bo Evans, CBS News, 26 Jan. 2026
  • While the final hours of 2025 whittle away, here's what to know about what will be open and closed on the first day of 2026.
    — James Powel, USA Today, 31 Dec. 2025
  • The preview culminates in a big boss fight wherein Samus must whittle away at the plant-like foe’s armor then guide her psychic shots into its weak points.
    — Christopher Cruz, Rolling Stone, 14 Nov. 2025
  • Salah is part of a larger trend of attacks on immigrants that whittle away at democratic norms and legal protections for everyone.
    — Sarah Rumpf-Whitten , Brooke Taylor, FOXNews.com, 3 Apr. 2026
  • As court rulings across the country whittled away the NCAA’s power and rulebook, gambling was a red line that seemed uncrossable.
    — Matt Baker, New York Times, 8 June 2026
  • But for years, Republicans have whittled away at the infrastructure of the original ACA.
    — Elisabeth Rosenthal, Miami Herald, 12 Aug. 2025
  • By whittling away the qualitative, the GPA creates a gap between what the metric measures and what actually matters to students.
    — Big Think, 20 Feb. 2026
  • In front of a raucous home crowd, Golden State built a lead as large as 18 in the first half, only to see the Mercury whittle away at that advantage throughout the final two quarters.
    — Nathan Canilao, Mercury News, 10 June 2026
  • But all of that positive momentum whittled away in less than a week after Thursday night’s disappointing 28-6 loss to the Baltimore Ravens.
    — Andre Fernandez, Miami Herald, 31 Oct. 2025
  • Bednar’s deservedly built up a lot of political capital from the ’22 Stanley Cup championship — but each postseason that’s followed has whittled away the comfort.
    — Troy Renck, Denver Post, 29 Sep. 2025
  • Greene’s resignation will whittle away the Republican caucus’s already extremely narrow majority in the House.
    — Dan Mangan, CNBC, 22 Nov. 2025
  • The rise of racist poll taxes, literacy tests and threats of violence, however, whittled away the rights of Black voters until the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
    — Hansi Lo Wang, NPR, 8 Jan. 2026
  • Sarandos and Campbell were the only streaming executives who testified, but they were treated as stand-ins for the entire media and entertainment industries, which have seen significant consolidation over the last two decades, slowly whittling away at labor’s leverage.
    — Winston Cho, HollywoodReporter, 3 Sep. 2019
  • Under pressure from the European Union, Luxembourg’s secrecy is now being whittled away with the publication of corporate records revealing once-private information on companies domiciled in the country.
    — Miami Herald, 7 Nov. 2025
  • Over the months that followed, his administration has whittled away at the Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, program for people from a variety of countries, adding Afghanistan to the growing list in May.
    — Kevin Fixler, Idaho Statesman, 19 Dec. 2025
  • Without historical habitat protections, a butterfly species such as this one might disappear entirely between underfunded surveys, vanishing before anyone realizes, while species such as the manatee may continue shrinking as previous methods of intervention get whittled away.
    — Lois Parshley, The Atlantic, 25 Aug. 2025
  • Jones has been the league's best backup while going 3-0 to lead perhaps the most unlikely 4-1 team in the NFL — the team’s best five-game start since 2021 — given the attrition that has whittled away the depth across San Francisco’s roster.
    — Andrew Greif, NBC news, 3 Oct. 2025
  • After 16 years in power and four straight election victories, Orban is facing an unprecedented challenge from a center-right opponent — Peter Magyar of the Tisza party — who has sought to whittle away at Orban’s rural support base with months of relentless touring in the countryside.
    — Justin Spike, Los Angeles Times, 10 Apr. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'whittle away.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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