Definition of "reduce"

reduce

/ɹɪˈdjuːs/

verb
third-person singular simple present reduces, present participle reducing, simple past and past participle reduced
1. (transitive) To bring down the size, quantity, quality, value or intensity of something; to diminish, to lower.
  Quotations
  Becoming more aware of the progress that scientists have made on behavioral fronts can reduce the risk that other natural scientists will resort to mystical agential accounts when they exceed the limits of their own disciplinary training.
  2012 January, Stephen Ledoux, “Behaviorism at 100”, in American Scientist‎, volume 100, number 1, page 60
  Most train operators have reduced services with emergency timetables, as they struggle to cope with a rapid increase in staff absences due to the Omicron variant of COVID.
  2022 January 12, Paul Clifton, “Network News: Emergency timetables as absences surge due to COVID”, in RAIL, number 948, page 6
2. (intransitive) To lose weight.
3. (transitive) To bring to an inferior rank; to degrade, to demote.
  Quotations
  My father, the eldest son of an ancient but reduced family, left me with little.
  1815 February 24, [Walter Scott], Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and Archibald Constable and Co., […]
  nothing so excellent but a man may falten upon something or other belonging to it whereby to reduce it .
  1671, John Tillotson, “Sermon II. The Folly of Scoffing at Religion. 2 Pet, published 1720
  Having reduced their foe to misery beneath their fears.
  1671, John Milton, “Samson Agonistes, […]”, in Paradise Regain’d. A Poem. In IV Books. To which is Added, Samson Agonistes, London: […] J. M[acock] for John Starkey […]
  Hester Prynne was shocked at the condition to which she found the clergyman reduced.
  1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, chapter 13, in The Scarlet Letter, a Romance, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields
  Neither [Jones] […] nor I (in 1966) could conceive of reducing our "science" to the ultimate absurdity of reading Finnish newspapers almost a century and a half old in order to establish "priority."
  1992, Rudolf M[athias] Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume V, New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, page viii
4. (transitive) To humble; to conquer; to subdue; to capture.
5. (transitive) To bring to an inferior state or condition.
6. (transitive, cooking) To decrease the liquid content of food by boiling much of its water off.
  Quotations
  Serve the oxtails with mustard or a sauce made by reducing the soup, if any is left, to a slightly thick sauce.
  2011, Edward Behr, James MacGuire, The Art of Eating Cookbook: Essential Recipes from the First 25 Years.
7. (transitive, chemistry) To add electrons / hydrogen or to remove oxygen.
8. (transitive, metallurgy) To produce metal from ore by removing nonmetallic elements in a smelter.
9. (transitive, mathematics) To simplify an equation or formula without changing its value.
10. (transitive, computer science) To express the solution of a problem in terms of another (known) algorithm.
11. (transitive, logic) To convert a syllogism to a clearer or simpler form.
12. (transitive, law) To convert to written form. (Usage note: this verb almost always appears as "reduce to writing".)
13. (transitive, medicine) To perform a reduction; to restore a fracture or dislocation to the correct alignment.
14. (transitive, military) To reform a line or column from (a square).
15. (transitive, military) To strike off the payroll.
16. (transitive, Scotland, law) To annul by legal means.
17. (transitive, obsolete) To translate (a book, document, etc.).

Definition of "reduce"

reduce

verb

Quotations

Quotations

Quotations