Other forms: pares, pared, paring
To pare is to trim the outer layer off something. Pare an apple, pare your nails, pare down the budget.
It means taking thin slices, which is why paring is careful where cutting need not be. Pare down is the common figurative use, meaning to reduce gradually. A paring knife is the small one. Note that the Latin parare means to prepare.
1verbpareTo trim the outer layer off something.
“Pare the hard skin off the pineapple before cutting it into chunks.”
pare is a trimming.
Old French parer means to trim or prepare, from Latin parare, to make ready. Prepare comes from the same root.
Proto-Indo-European
*per- — to bring forward, bring forth
Latin
parō — to prepare, arrange; to provide, furnish; to resolve, purpose
Old French
parer — to arrange, prepare, trim
Middle English
paren
English, today
pare
Built 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”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA