reducing

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of reduce.

   The company is reducing its workforce to cut operating costs.

   Reducing emissions remains the central goal of the new agreement.

   Note

   The -ing form drops the final e of reduce and does double duty. After be it builds the progressive (is reducing its workforce); standing alone it names the activity as a noun (reducing emissions). It carries the verb's intransitive sense of losing weight too, so a dieter can simply be reducing, with no object at all. The same spelling also serves as the chemist's adjective.

2. 2
   adjective

   Tending to cause reduction in another substance by donating electrons to it.

   Carbon serves as a reducing agent when iron ore is smelted.

   The kiln maintained a reducing atmosphere to keep the metal from oxidizing.

   Oppositeoxidizing

   Note

   A chemist's adjective, and one that takes comparison: one substance can be more reducing than another, meaning it gives up electrons more readily. That giving is the point. A reducing substance is itself oxidized in the same reaction, so the two processes always travel together. It sits most often before agent and atmosphere, the latter describing a kiln or furnace kept from oxidizing what it heats.

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