Chip away at covers a lot of ground in workplace English -- clearing a backlog, eroding a margin, wearing down resistance -- and the same grammar carries every one of those meanings. The ten sentences below span both directions of the phrase, its aspect forms, and the boundary that trips learners up most often.
Positive progress
"We've been chipping away at the open tickets since Monday, and we're finally under a hundred."
"It's not glamorous work, but if the team keeps chipping away, the technical debt will be manageable by Q3."
The second sentence drops the object entirely -- keeps chipping away -- which is natural when the target is already understood and the sentence is really about encouragement and pace, not the specific task.
Negative erosion
"Every support escalation we don't automate chips away at margin a little more."
"Two more missed deadlines like that will chip away at the client's confidence in us."
Notice the mirror-image grammar here: the same preposition pattern that names steady progress against a backlog also names steady damage to something valuable. Only the object -- and the polarity it carries -- tells you which reading is intended.
Stakeholder resistance -- a strategic use of "progress"
"A few small proof points chipped away at the board's resistance to the pilot."
Aspect: naming an ongoing trend
"We've been chipping away at the risk register for months, and it shows."
Want to learn "Chip Away" in depth?
Lyra Practice teaches advanced non-native professionals the nuance of high-value expressions like this one, then has you practice using them in realistic work scenarios.
Start learning for free →Finance and executive register
"Rising support costs are chipping away at the savings we booked last quarter."
The boundary with "chip in"
"It's chip away at, not chip in -- nobody's contributing money here, just steadily reducing the backlog."
Calibrating severity
"It's chipping away at capacity, not collapsing it -- we still have room this sprint."
That sentence shows the phrase doing careful, honest work: naming a real trend without overstating how bad it already is.
Market position
"Two competitors undercutting us on price are chipping away at our market share in the mid-market segment."
No single lost deal in that sentence would be worth escalating on its own -- the sentence exists precisely because the trend, not any one event, is the real story.
Practice scenarios
Practice using chip away at in situations like:
- reporting cumulative progress on a backlog or technical debt without overclaiming speed
- flagging a slow erosion of margin, trust, or market share before it becomes urgent
- calibrating severity so the phrase doesn't understate or overstate what's actually happening
Useful practice phrases:
- "[Team] has been chipping away at [backlog/debt], down [amount] so far."
- "[Recurring issue] is chipping away at [margin/trust/capacity]."
- "It's chipping away at [X], not collapsing it."
Ten sentences, two directions, one preposition that never drops -- that's the whole grammar of "chip away at."
Once the polarity judgment is automatic, the phrase becomes one of the sharpest tools in workplace English for describing what accumulation does over time.
Lyra Practice helps advanced non-native English professionals learn the nuance of high-value workplace expressions and practice using them in realistic scenarios, so their English sounds natural, precise, and senior at work. Try Lyra Practice.