Pare

//pɛə// name, verb, slang

name, verb, slang ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To remove the outer covering or skin of something with a cutting device, typically a knife. transitive

    "Victor pared some apples in preparation to make a tart."

  2. 2
    decrease gradually or bit by bit wordnet
  3. 3
    To reduce, diminish or trim gradually something as if by cutting off. transitive

    "Albert had to pare his options down by disregarding anything beyond his meager budget."

  4. 4
    remove the edges from and cut down to the desired size wordnet
  5. 5
    To trim the hoof of a horse.
Show 3 more definitions
  1. 6
    remove the skin from wordnet
  2. 7
    To sharpen a pencil. Ireland, slang
  3. 8
    cut small bits or pare shavings from wordnet
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A Bantu language spoken in Tanzania.

Synonyms

All synonyms
skinpeelwhittleabridgeabscindamputate

Example

More examples

"The company says it must pare its workforce to the “absolute minimum needed to maintain operations.”"

Etymology

From Middle English paren, from Old French parer (“to arrange, prepare, trim”), from Latin parō (“I prepare, arrange; I provide, furnish; I resolve, purpose”) (related to pariō (“I bear, I give birth to; I spawn, produce, beget; I procure, acquire”)), from a Proto-Indo-European *per- (“to bring forward, bring forth”).

Related phrases

pare awaypare downpare offpare to the boneparing knife

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.