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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

pare.

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

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/pɛə/Received-Pronunciation/pɛɹ/General-American/peː/Australia/ˈpeə/New-Zealand
  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. 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.
  3. To trim the hoof of a horse.

  4. To sharpen a pencil.

    Ireland · slang
Where this word comes from

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

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.