Minimize

//ˈmɪn.ɪ.maɪz// verb

verb ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To make (something) smaller or as small as possible; shrink; reduce. transitive

    "We have to minimize the budget."

  2. 2
    make small or insignificant wordnet
  3. 3
    To relegate or assign (something) to a less insignificant status; diminish. transitive

    "The insurance adjuster tried to minimize the extent of the damage to lessen the company's exposure to liability."

  4. 4
    represent as less significant or important wordnet
  5. 5
    To remove (a window) from the main display area, collapsing it to an icon or caption. transitive

    "I didn't close anything, but I minimized all the windows so I could see the desktop."

Show 3 more definitions
  1. 6
    cause to seem less serious; play down wordnet
  2. 7
    To treat (someone) in a slighting manner. transitive

    "[…] father who had never openly minimized him or anything he did […]"

  3. 8
    To treat as trivial or insignificant; to trivialize. transitive

    "to minimize someone's feelings"

Synonyms

All synonyms
belittledenigratederogatedownplayunderstatelilliputianize

Example

More examples

"It may be impossible to get a completely error-free corpus due to the nature of this kind of collaborative effort. However, if we encourage members to contribute sentences in their own languages rather than experiment in languages they are learning, we might be able to minimize errors."

Etymology

From Latin minimus + -ize.

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