skiving

verb

present participle of skive
as in whittling

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Example Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for skiving
  1. whittling
  2. shaving
  3. shearing
  4. pruning
  5. cutting
  6. paring
  7. trimming
  8. cropping
Verb
  • The film eventually ballooned to six hours before Gibney began whittling it back.
    — Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 6 Oct. 2026
  • Voters set up races for four Orange County commission seats in November by whittling casts of candidates to two in districts 2, 6, 7 and 8.
    — Stephen Hudak, The Orlando Sentinel, 19 Aug. 2026
Definition of whittling
Verb
  • Like almost winning a race, almost shaving a second off my time for the 3200m run, my event in high school, the one that got me into college, a recruit for someone else to gamble on.
    — Literary Hub, Literary Hub, 15 Oct. 2026
  • The point-shaving scheme resulted in more than $3 million in fraudulent wagers.
    — ABC News, ABC News, 13 Oct. 2026
Definition of shaving
Verb
  • As a member of the mint family, horehound has the tendency to spread aggressively, but this can be prevented by shearing the inconspicuous flowers, which is also done to expose the evergreen foliage.
    — Nadia Hassani, The Spruce, 6 Sep. 2026
  • Cut individual branches rather than shearing the shrub like a hedge.
    — Karen Brewer Grossman, Southern Living, 31 Aug. 2026
Definition of shearing
Verb
  • States can help by pruning occupational licensing requirements and making credentials modular and stackable, so short qualifications add up into longer ones.
    — Eric Kutcher, Fortune, 11 Oct. 2026
  • It’s been a dynamic year with a varied complexion of transactions, from mega-mergers to portfolio pruning through corporate divestitures.
    — Kathryn Hopkins, Footwear News, 9 Oct. 2026
Definition of pruning
Verb
  • Upgrading to the Thrust Variant requires a $245,000 follow-up payment and adds SpaceX cold-gas rear thrusters alongside an active multi-mode fan system for downforce, cutting acceleration down to under a second.
    — Mrigakshi Dixit, Interesting Engineering, 16 Oct. 2026
  • And by cutting China off, Washington gave Beijing every reason to build its own alternatives.
    — Nicholas Gordon, Fortune, 16 Oct. 2026
Definition of cutting
Verb
  • Since their debut in 1986, American Girl has shrunk their historical line significantly–including paring down the traditional six-book set for each historical character into two streamlined texts.
    — Literary Hub, Literary Hub, 5 Oct. 2026
  • Boeing shares were up as much as 3% in premarket trading before paring back some of those gains.
    — Sawdah Bhaimiya, CNBC, 29 Sep. 2026
Definition of paring
Verb
  • Rather than trimming that weight, Fukushima's lab asked whether anything needed to be worn at all.
    — New Atlas, New Atlas, 7 Oct. 2026
  • Spectator interference became the ruling, and Volpe was awarded an RBI double that scored Lombard from first base, trimming Tampa Bay's lead to 4-3.
    — ABC News, ABC News, 7 Oct. 2026
Definition of trimming
Verb
  • The photo editing tools are also limited to basic actions like cropping and rotating.
    — Jordan Minor, PC Magazine, 14 Sep. 2026
  • Meta released its Content Seal AI watermark recently, but Reuters found that simply cropping the images a bit would often eliminate the watermark.
    — ArsTechnica, ArsTechnica, 29 July 2026
Definition of cropping
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Browse Nearby Words

skives
skiving
skivvies
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Cite this Entry

“Skiving.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/skiving. Accessed 20 Oct. 2026.

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