cut to the bone

idiom

: reduced to the lowest possible amount

The company's expenses had been cut to the bone.

Examples of cut to the bone in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The Centers for Disease Control and the U.S. Department of Agriculture represent the United States’ first line of defense against microbial threats to human health, plants, and livestock, but both agencies have been cut to the bone. —Laurie Garrett, Foreign Affairs, 1 Nov. 2013

Call Me By Your Name With depictions of first desire that cut to the bone, this 2017 coming-of-age romance will crack your heart open. —Erica Marrison, Peoplemag, 2 June 2024

Cutting mortgage rates to stimulate sales may work in larger cities with more housing demand, but not in smaller ones where rates have already been cut to the bone, said Houze Song, an economist at the Paulson Institute, a US think thank. —Tom Hancock, Fortune Asia, 20 May 2024

But a newspaper can’t play that role when its staff has been cut to the bone. —Curtis Bunn, NBC News, 24 Jan. 2024

But Louisiana has one of the lowest average incomes in the nation and so the rising costs there are quicker to cut to the bone. —Leslie Kaufman, Anchorage Daily News, 17 Sep. 2023

The movie’s two hours were barely enough to tell the story; to tell it in about two-and-a-half, while leaving room for those 17 new songs, everything else has been cut to the bone, with no room for subtlety, let alone expressivity. —Jesse Green, New York Times, 3 Aug. 2023

That helped many governments award temporary pay increases to retain key personnel, and hire others into departments that had been cut to the bone, such as public health. —Lydia Depillis, New York Times, 27 July 2023

Newsrooms cut to the bone at places like the Denver Post and the San Jose Mercury News can no longer provide robust news coverage to their communities, and there’s precious little strategic thinking about how to make the papers sustainable into the future. —Washington Post, 17 Apr. 2021