# depress

Pronunciation: US say "di-PRES" /dɪˈpɹɛs/; UK

## Verb

1. To make someone feel sad, downhearted, or bored.
   - Simple: To make someone feel sad, low, or without energy.
   - _Constant criticism can depress even the most confident person._
   - _The gloomy forecast depressed the whole team before the trip._
2. To push or press something downward.
   - Simple: To push something down with force or pressure.
   - _Depress the clutch fully before changing gears._
   - _The pianist depressed the keys with a delicate, even touch._
3. To cause a slump or decline in part of the economy.
   - Simple: To make part of the economy weaker, with less buying and selling.
   - _A sudden loss of confidence can depress consumer spending nationwide._
   - _The recession depressed wages across the manufacturing sector._
4. To bring someone low; to humble their pride or self-importance.
   - Simple: To make someone feel less proud or important, and bring them low.
   - _The rebuke was meant to depress his arrogance, not crush his confidence._
   - _Repeated humiliations finally depressed the tyrant's pride._
5. To reduce an equation to one of lower degree.
   - Simple: To rewrite an equation so it uses smaller powers, making it easier to solve.
   - _Factoring out a known root lets you depress the equation by one degree._
   - _The student depressed the cubic equation to a quadratic._

## Origin

From Middle English depressen, borrowed through Old French depresser from Latin dēpressus, the past participle of dēprimō ("to press down, weigh down"), which combines dē- ("down, away") with premō ("to press").

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/depress (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).