whittle

• IPA^(key): /ˈʍɪtəl/, /ˈwɪtəl/

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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 clasp knife, pocket knife, or sheath knife.
   • 1682 December 15 (first performance; Gregorian calendar), [John] Dryden, [Nathaniel] Lee, The Duke of Guise. A Tragedy. […], London: […] T[homas] H[odgkin] for R[ichard] Bentley […], and J[acob] Tonson […], published 1683, →OCLC, Act IV, scene i, page 50:

     Novv if any man can be ſo unkind to his ovvn Body, for I meddle not vvith your Souls, as to ſtand ſtill like a good Chriſtian, and offer his VVeeſon to a Butcher's VVhittle, I ſay no more but that he may be ſav'd, and that's the beſt can come on him.

   • 1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter III, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC:

     Rude whittles.

   • 1873, Alfred Gatty, Sheffield: Past and Present:

     The Sheffield whittle was the common knife of the country, which every one carried for general purposes, who was not entitled by rank to wear a sword.

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.
   • 1554, John Withals, A Dictionarie in English and Latine:

     When men are well whitled, their toungs run at randome

• whittle down
• whittle the whalebone
• whittling

From Middle English whytel, from Old English hwītel (“cloak, blanket”), from Proto-West Germanic *hwītil, from Proto-Germanic *hwītilaz, equivalent to white +‎ -le; akin to Icelandic hvítill (“white bedcover, sheet, linen”).

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.
   • 1857, Charles Kingsley, “(please specify the page)”, in Two Years Ago, volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Macmillan and Co., →OCLC:

     Her figure is tall , graceful , and slight ; the severity of its outlines suiting well with the severity of her dress , with the brown stuff gown , and plain gray whittle

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.