verb ·2 syllables ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Verb

1. 1
   To de-emphasize; to present or portray as less important or consequential. transitive

   "He would sometimes downplay his Princeton education by saying simply that he went to school in New Jersey."

2. 2
   understate the importance or quality of wordnet
3. 3
   represent as less significant or important wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

minimizeplay downunderstateunderstateabateallay

Antonyms

All antonyms

exaggerateemphasizeoverdo

Example

More examples

"Not to downplay the situation, but could he be joking?"

Etymology

Synthetic form of the phrase play down. By surface analysis, down- + play.

Related phrases

de emphasize

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.