pare
/pɛː
/verb [with object]
1Trim (something) by cutting away its outer edges: Carlo pared his thumbnails with his knife...
- Being a consummate realist, Joyce reports what he observes and then nonchalantly pares his fingernails, as Stephen suggests in the speculative remarks at the end of A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man.
- As soon as the nails were soft, I pared them right back.
Synonyms
cut (off), trim (off), peel (off), shave (off), strip (off), clip (off), skin
technical decorticate, excoriate
1.1Cut off (the outer skin) of something: pare off the rind using a peeler...
- Doctors take up knives and pare off flesh and bone.
- My brand new trainers were completely wrecked with the imprints of red hot nails all over them, and it took me hours that afternoon to pare off all the blackened rubber with a knife to keep my parents from finding out.
- Barrett has the ability to really pare away the onion skins of the individual to show the true man inside.
1.2Reduce (something) in size, extent, or quantity in a number of small successive stages: union leaders publicly pared down their demands we pared costs by doing our own cleaning...
- Requests for large quantities of food were pared down to more practical servings.
- It would be the defendant's early application that the writ be pared down to a considerable extent to put it in terms that are able to be properly defended and pleaded to.
- When he wrote the play, his intention was that there should be no excess and so each scene is pared down to exactly what he wants to say.
Synonyms
reduce, diminish, decrease, cut, cut back/down, make cutbacks in, whittle away/down, salami-slice, trim, slim down, prune, lower, lessen, retrench, curtail
Derivatives
parer
/ noun ...- That's why John Alexander has gathered around him a group of cheese parers, to slice and dice everything Nine does to make it more profitable by cutting costs, lifting revenue and margins.
- Whatever varieties you use, an apple corer/ sectioner or one of those old-fashioned crank parers will speed up the process.
- I had just about had it with our current selection of parers.
Origin
Middle English: from Old French parer 'adorn, prepare', also 'peel, trim', from Latin parare 'prepare'.
apparatus from early 17th century:
This is a Latin word, from apparare ‘make ready for’, from parare ‘make ready’. Other words going back to parare include disparate (Late Middle English), ‘prepared apart’; pare (Middle English); prepare (Late Middle English) ‘prepare in advance’; and separate (Late Middle English) from se- ‘apart’ and parare.