reduce.
To bring down the size, quantity, quality, value or intensity of something; to diminish, to lower.
Meaning & usage
To bring down the size, quantity, quality, value or intensity of something; to diminish, to lower.
to reduce weight, speed, heat, expenses, price, personnel etc.
To lose weight.
To bring to an inferior rank; to degrade, to demote.
to reduce a sergeant to the ranks
To humble; to conquer; to subdue; to capture.
to reduce a province or a fort
To bring to an inferior state or condition.
to reduce a city to ashes
To be forced by circumstances (into something one considers unworthy).
reduced to silence
To decrease the liquid content of (a food) by boiling much of its water off.
To add electrons / hydrogen or to remove oxygen.
Formaldehyde can be reduced to form methanol.
To produce metal from ore by removing nonmetallic elements in a smelter.
To simplify an equation or formula without changing its value.
To express the solution of a problem in terms of another (known) algorithm.
To convert a syllogism to a clearer or simpler form.
To convert to written form. (Usage note: this verb almost always appears as “reduce to writing”.)
It is important that all business contracts be reduced to writing.
To perform a reduction; to restore a fracture or dislocation to the correct alignment.
To reform a line or column from (a square).
To strike off the payroll.
To annul by legal means.
To pronounce (a sound or word) with less effort.
The first vowel of support is reduced to schwa by most English speakers.
To translate (a book, document, etc.).
a book reduced into English
Where this word comes from
From Middle English reducen, from Old French reduire, from Latin redūcō (“reduce”); from re- (“back”) + dūcō (“lead”). See duke, and compare with redoubt.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.