Bagatellize
verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 To regard as a bagatelle; to play down, trivialize or belittle. rare, transitive
"Both at Mari and in Assyria, the prophetic demands for cultic perfection and social justice were theologically based on the divinely sanctioned position of the king between the gods and his people. Therefore, the criticism of the prophets should not be bagatellized, even though it may appear to us as pedantic or indifferent from the ethical point of view.²⁶"
Example
More examples"Both at Mari and in Assyria, the prophetic demands for cultic perfection and social justice were theologically based on the divinely sanctioned position of the king between the gods and his people. Therefore, the criticism of the prophets should not be bagatellized, even though it may appear to us as pedantic or indifferent from the ethical point of view.²⁶"
Etymology
From bagatelle (“trifle; insubstantial thing”) + -ize. Compare German bagatellisieren.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.