pare

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• transitive verb To remove the outer covering or skin of with a knife or similar instrument.
• transitive verb To remove by or as if by cutting, clipping, or shaving.
• transitive verb To reduce, as in quantity or size; trim.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun An obsolete form of. pair.
• To trim by cutting or shaving off thin slices or flakes from the surface or the extremities: as, to pare an apple; to pare a horse's hoof, or one's nails; to pare old or worn-out grass-land.
• To reduce by cutting away superficial parts; diminish by little and little; cut down.
• To remove by or as by cutting, clipping, or shaving: with off or away: as, to pare off the rind of fruit; to pare away redundancies.
• Synonyms Pare, Peel, Shave off. To pare is to remove the surface only with a knife or similar instrument; to peel is to pull off the skin or rind. “That is peeled which is deprived of a natural layer or integument spread over it.” (C. J. Smith, Synonyms Discriminated, p. 603.) The figurative uses of these two words are limited. Shave or shave off still seems figurative when not implying the use of a razor, and is controlled in its meaning by that original sense; hence it is always limited to dressing off the surface.
• noun Among the Maoris of New Zealand, the carved ornament or ornamentation about a door.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• transitive verb To cut off, or shave off, the superficial substance or extremities of
• transitive verb To remove; to separate; to cut or shave, as the skin, rind, or outside part, from anything; -- followed by off or away.
• transitive verb Fig.: To diminish the bulk of; to reduce; to lessen.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• verb transitive to remove the outer covering or skin of something with a cutting device, typically a knife
• verb transitive to reduce, diminish or trim gradually something as if by cutting off
• verb to trim the hoof of a horse

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• verb decrease gradually or bit by bit
• verb cut small bits or pare shavings from
• verb strip the skin off
• verb remove the edges from and cut down to the desired size