boil down

British  

verb

1. to reduce or be reduced in quantity and usually altered in consistency by boiling

   to boil a liquid down to a thick glue

2. 1. (intr) to be the essential element in something

   2. (tr) to summarize; reduce to essentials

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boil down Idioms  

1. Simplify, summarize, or shorten, as in John finally managed to boil his thesis down to 200 pages .

2. 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]

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Example Sentences

Henry David Thoreau is one of those figures whose name one may know but whose writing often boils down in the mind to titles of works never read — including “Walden” and “Civil Disobedience.”

From Los Angeles Times

A successful maximalist egg all boils down to personal preference and balance.

From Salon

There might be 10 films nominated for best picture, but the race for the top category has boiled down to two films - political thriller One Battle After Another and vampire horror Sinners.

From BBC

Thereupon nuclear bluster permanently vanished from the U.S. presidential vocabulary, experts in diplomacy tell us, for reasons that boil down to a loss of credibility once Moscow could match the U.S. in nuclear firepower.

From The Wall Street Journal

In practical terms, the disagreement boils down to the question: Should humans intervene or let nature take it course?

From Los Angeles Times

Related Words

• adapt
• alter
• analyze
• annotate
• arrange
• assemble
• censor
• choose
• compile
• compose
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• prepare
• publish
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• select