Idiom idiom
pare down
Meaning
To reduce by paring or a similar gradual process.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“I need to pare down my expenses this month.”
“The editor asked the writer to pare down the long report to its most important facts.”
“To improve the efficiency of the organization, the director decided to pare down the bloated bureaucracy by removing several unnecessary layers of management.”
Anchors to
Last updated August 10, 2026