minimize
Formsminimizes, minimizing, minimized
UK spellingminimise
- 1To make something smaller or reduce it to the lowest possible amount or degree.
The new design minimizes drag, letting the car use less fuel.
Farmers rotate their crops to minimize soil erosion.
Similarreduce, lessen, decrease, cut, limit
Note
Latin minimus, 'least', plus -ize gives the verb two strengths. In everyday talk it often means no more than 'reduce', as in minimize your biases. Technical prose keeps the stricter 'as small as possible': Instruments and Control Systems in 1954 calls for means of minimizing inertia overdrift. There the target is the lowest value the conditions allow, which need not be zero.
- 2To represent or treat something as less significant than it actually is; to downplay or diminish its importance.
The company's statement minimized the scale of the data breach.
Historians who minimize the famine's impact ignore extensive firsthand accounts.
Similardownplay, understate, trivialize, belittle, underestimate
Oppositeexaggerate, overstate, emphasize, magnify
Note
Here the shrinking happens in the telling, not in the thing. An insurance adjuster who minimizes damage leaves the damage as it was and only makes it sound smaller. That gap between fact and account gives the verb its frequent accusatory edge: it implies deliberate understatement rather than honest assessment. Its object is a fact, an event or an extent. When the object is a person, it moves toward the slighting sense.
- 3In computing, to collapse a window into an icon or caption, taking it off the main part of the screen.
He minimized the spreadsheet and opened his email instead.
You can minimize a window without closing the program running inside it.
Note
An interface word, and the one to keep distinct from closing. A minimized window leaves the screen, but the program inside it keeps running and can be brought back as it was. 'I didn't close anything, I minimized the windows' is the typical contrast. The object is almost always a window, or 'all the windows' when someone wants to see the desktop beneath.
- 4To treat someone in a slighting or belittling manner, behaving as though the person were of little importance.
Colleagues minimized her for years until her research won a national award.
Managers who minimize junior staff rarely keep talented employees for long.
Similarbelittle, dismiss, underrate, disparage, slight
Note
Here it is the person who is made small, not a problem or a claim. Jan McDaniel's One Golden Summer speaks of a father who had never openly minimized him or anything he did, a phrase that pairs the person with his deeds and shows how close this sits to the downplaying meaning. Openly suggests the slighting can also be quiet. Belittle is the closest everyday equivalent.
Practice
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Origin
Formed from Latin "minimus" (smallest) combined with the suffix "-ize."