The Collaborative International Dictionary
Chisel \Chis"el\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Chiseled, or Chiselled (?); p. pr. & vb. n. Chiseling, or Chiselling.] [Cf. F. ciseler.]
To cut, pare, gouge, or engrave with a chisel; as, to chisel a block of marble into a statue.
To cut close, as in a bargain; to cheat. [Slang]
Wiktionary
alt. (context US English) (present participle of chisel English) n. (alt form chiselling English) vb. (context US English) (present participle of chisel English)
Usage examples of "chiseling".
He went back to chiseling the huge belt buckle, but the bizarre little scene began to gnaw at him.
Now he was chiseling the side plane, the face and head, part of the neck and curls of grapes, now the depth of the left shoulder, thigh and calf.
He had bled from marble before: chips from his too frenzied chiseling had sometimes hit him in the face, piercing the skin.
With a little chiseling the head of Goliath would disappear, and in its place would be a round sphere.
He walked up close to Pete, not even looking at me once, and said, "You chiseling dago rat.
He stood there in his hat and overcoat until I had told it all, then he said, "That chiseling dago rat," kind of half under his breath and his face began to get like it got when he was mad.
Like that chiseling dago rat said, he's plenty tough and plenty smart.
I suppose he thought this was just a little petty chiseling that he should be taken in on.
I also had to leave the blunt chiseling for Korneff, but thanks to my skill, I was able to take over the fine chiseling and scalloping, to square off the slabs, draw the lines for the four blows, and finish the dolomite borders.
In between times, for a break, if harder work were really a break, I went back to the time-consuming chiseling of the insets for the diamond-shaped back-plate with the inlaid initial H.
I kicked another stone chip into the harbor and looked down the breakwater at the dark hull that the Spidlarian iron merchant's crew was already chiseling apart.
Well, the substitution might have been made anywhere, any time, by any oneeven by a chiseling maharajah.
Crews of whalers caught in the ice passed the winter until the spring melt by chiseling inscriptions on large stones, which they mounted over the burial sites.
He found Broadmoor in the open shed, chiseling away on a five-meter-long red cedar log that lay horizontal on four heavy-duty sawhorses.
In order to hide the chiseling, this army's got twice as many official units as it does men to fill them properly.