to narrow down
129
3.5
- phrasal verb
- /ˈnɛroʊ daʊn/
:
reducir
- She spent the afternoon trying to narrow down her choices for the wedding venue.
- narrow down the list
- narrow down a search
- narrow down to one
It's very difficult for me to narrow down on one single thing.
- It's very difficult for me to narrow down on one single thing.
- Yes, drones are highly advanced tech, so they've narrowed down the suspect to Iran.
- They started narrowing it down and I kept making the cut.
- So now you're kind of narrowing down why.
- And then as you go through, you sort of narrow down what it might be.
- Uber's search for a female CEO has been narrowed down to three men.
- All right, I chose a female when I started narrowing it down.
- We can probably narrow it down a little bit.
- But the constraint helps to narrow your choices down.
Examples
-
And that helped us narrow down possibilities for the origin of the paint.
Fiction book (1994) -
Now, how can we narrow down from these couple of possibilities?
-
Why do we so quickly narrow the issue down to language?
-
And then as you go through, you sort of narrow down what it might be.
-
Trying to narrow down the topic for this article has been difficult.
Academic text (2014) -
The next step would involve narrowing down the selection of studies within a category.
Academic text (2014) -
With one week to go, presidential campaigns usually narrow down to a small handful of states.
Blog text (3) -
Because healthcare offers a variety of specialties and opportunities, you need to narrow the options down to a specific goal.
Academic text (1998) -
Kid, I like your enthusiasm, but I think we have to work on narrowing down our list of suspects.
-
OK, I've got it narrowed down to two.
Synonyms
204
2.8
Make options or choices fewer to focus on the best
71
2.8
To make something simpler by cutting out details
65
2.7
To make something smaller in amount or number
10
5.1
To make a list or group smaller by removing items over time
9
4.4
Make something smaller by removing parts you do not need
2
6.5
Make a large list smaller by removing worse choices
Antonyms
How Focused
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'to reduce the number of possibilities' is directly derivable from combining 'narrow' (to make less wide or more limited) with 'down' (indicating reduction or movement toward a smaller set). This verb + down construction transparently signals reduction and is common cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words should be able to infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
The phrase narrow down gives a simple picture: imagine a wide road becoming a thin path so fewer cars can pass. So narrow, meaning 'make smaller', and down, meaning 'toward less', explain why it means 'to reduce the number of choices'.