whittle

Meanings

1. A knife; especially, a clasp-knife, pocket knife, or sheath knife.

1. To cut or shape wood with a knife.
2. To reduce or gradually eliminate something (such as a debt).
3. To make eager or excited; to excite with liquor; to inebriate.

1. A covering for a bed; sheet.
2. A coarse greyish double blanket worn over the shoulders, like a cloak or shawl.
3. A kind of fine woollen shawl, originally and especially a white one.
4. A baby's flannel; a baby's woollen napkin; a flannel petticoat.

1. A surname.
2. An unincorporated community in Russell County, Kentucky, United States.

Etymology

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, possibly from Proto-Indo-European *twey- (“to shake, hurl, toss”). Compare Old Norse þveita (“to hurl”), Ancient Greek σείω (seíō, “I shake”). Related to thwite and thwaite.