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.
“Eventually it boils down to numbers,” he added.
"People love Pokémon for different reasons, but really kind of boils down to that you get comfort from it, it's enjoyable, it's just a bit of fun," she says.
From BBC
“One of the biggest challenges to the internet writ large right now is trust, and for us that really boils down to combating bots and fake accounts,” said Roth.
The dollar reached its strongest position of the past month on Thursday, helped by support from investors that boiled down to more than just one simple catalyst.
The dollar reached its strongest position of the past month on Thursday, helped by support from investors that boiled down to more than just one simple catalyst.
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.
