Reducing

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /ɹɪˈdjuːsɪŋ/

Definitions

1. The process of making something smaller or less in amount, size, or degree involves diminishing, lessening, or limiting certain aspects
2. Engaging in the act of decreasing the quantity or intensity of an entity typically entails minimizing, lowering, or curtailing its characteristics
3. The action of lowering the level or amount of something usually involves subtracting, cutting back, or diminishing that particular element

Etymology: "Reducing" is simply the present participle and gerund of "reduce," so its history is really the history of that verb. "Reduce" comes from Latin "reducere," meaning "to lead back," built from "re-" (back) and "ducere" (to lead), the same "duc-" found in "conduct," "produce," and "duke." It entered English in the early 1400s, and its earliest senses were concrete and about restoring things to a former state: to bring a people back under authority, or to bring a fraction down to simplest terms. The sense of making something smaller arrived later, and it came partly through a chemical and culinary idea of "leading" a substance back to a more concentrated form. Cooks reduce a sauce by boiling away water, and chemists reduce ores to extract metal, a meaning that gave rise to the modern technical sense in which a reduction is a gain of electrons. "Reducing" as a verb form simply follows the general pattern, with "reducing" used in the same sense as "reduce" from its start.

Synonyms: diminishing, lessening, decreasing, cutting, curtailing

Antonyms: increasing, expanding, enlarging, augmenting, amplifying