boil down
Britishverb
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to reduce or be reduced in quantity and usually altered in consistency by boiling
to boil a liquid down to a thick glue
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(intr) to be the essential element in something
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(tr) to summarize; reduce to essentials
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Simplify, summarize, or shorten, as in John finally managed to boil his thesis down to 200 pages .
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boil down to . Be reducible to basic elements, be equivalent to. For example, What this issue boils down to is that the council doesn't want to spend more money . These metaphoric usages allude to reducing and concentrating a substance by boiling off liquid. [Late 1800s]
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Many of the accusations boil down to poor offboarding procedures inside the iPhone maker, according to OpenAI.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 1, 2026
While Dudley listed a number of different issues, they boil down to three big ones.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 20, 2026
"It does boil down to customer service," she believes.
From BBC ● Aug. 18, 2026
“You’ve got three very different candidates, each with very different constituencies, all within the margin of error. It’s going to boil down to turnout,” said Mark DiCamillo, the director of Berkeley IGS polls.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 28, 2026
I scooped under the snow for teaberry plants to boil down and pour over snowballs for dessert.
From "My Side of the Mountain" by Jean Craighead George
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
