whittle

• IPA^(key): /ˈʍɪtəl/, /ˈwɪtəl/

• Audio (US):

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• Rhymes: -ɪtəl

From Middle English whittel (“large knife”), an alteration of thwitel, itself from thwiten (“to whittle”), from Old English þwītan (“to strike down, whittle”), from Proto-Germanic *þwītaną, from Proto-Indo-European *tweys- (“to shake, hurl, toss”). Compare Old Norse þveita (“to hurl”), Ancient Greek σείω (seíō, “I shake”). Related to thwite and thwaite.

whittle (plural whittles)

1. A knife; especially, a pocket knife, sheath knife, or clasp knife.
   • Template:RQ:Dryden DOG

     A butcher's whittle.

   • Template:RQ:Macaulay History
   • (Can we date this quote by Betterton and provide title, author’s full name, and other details?)

     He wore a Sheffield whittle in his hose.

whittle (third-person singular simple present whittles, present participle whittling, simple past and past participle whittled)

1. (transitive or intransitive) To cut or shape wood with a knife.
   • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter X, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:

     He was sitting on a bench before the fire, with his feet on the stove hearth, and in one hand was holding close up to his face that little negro idol of his; peering hard into its face, and with a jack-knife gently whittling away at its nose, meanwhile humming to himself in his heathenish way.

2. (transitive) To reduce or gradually eliminate something (such as a debt).
3. (transitive, figurative) To make eager or excited; to excite with liquor; to inebriate.
   • (Can we date this quote by Withals and provide title, author’s full name, and other details?)

     When men are well whittled, their tongues run at random.

• whittle down
• whittling

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• Irish: ^{(please verify)} smiot
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}

From an Old English [Term?] word for "white"; akin to an Icelandic word for a white bedcover.

whittle (plural whittles)

1. (archaic) A coarse greyish double blanket worn by countrywomen, in the west of England, over the shoulders, like a cloak or shawl.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Charles Kingsley to this entry?)

2. (archaic) A whittle shawl; a kind of fine woollen shawl, originally and especially a white one.

• Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield, Massachusetts, G.&C. Merriam Co., 1967
• Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “whittle”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.
• Oxford English Dictionary, 1884–1928, and First Supplement, 1933.