paring down

As American president Theodore Roosevelt found, paring down language can go too far.

The traditional statement did not need paring down so as to pass the meshes of a new and exacting criticism.

Nowhere is there room for a large city; nor can the hills be dug away except by paring down a great part of Ohio and Kentucky.

Occasionally she operated on some of her sentences, paring down the longer ones and speeding up the tempo of the story.

The first of these objects is to be arrived at by paring down the horn in a funnel-shaped fashion over the seat of the prick.

The paring down of the fresh wood to the level of the surrounding parts has now to be very carefully done.