Verb

(archaic) To cut.

* Tennyson

My good blade carved the casques of men.

To cut meat in order to serve it.

You carve the roast and I'll serve the vegetables.

To shape to sculptural effect; to produce (a work) by cutting, or to cut (a material) into a finished work.

to carve a name into a tree

* {{quote-book, year=1920, year_published=2008 , edition=HTML, author=Edgar Rice Burroughs

, title=Thuvia, Maiden of Mars citation , publisher=The Gutenberg Project , passage=The facades of the buildings fronting upon the avenue within the wall were richly carven

* {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham)

, title=(The China Governess) , chapter=1 citation , passage=The half-dozen pieces […] were painted white and carved with festoons of flowers, birds and cupids. To display them the walls had been tinted a vivid blue which had now faded, but the carpet, which had evidently been stored and recently relaid, retained its original turquoise.}}

(snowboarding) To perform a series of turns without pivoting, so that the tip and tail of the snowboard take the same path.

(figuratively) To take or make, as by cutting; to provide.

* South

who could easily have carved themselves their own food.

* {{quote-news, year=2010

, date=December 29 , author=Sam Sheringham , title=Liverpool 0 - 1 Wolverhampton , work=BBC citation , page= , passage=The Reds carved the first opening of the second period as Glen Johnson's pull-back found David Ngog but the Frenchman hooked wide from six yards. }}

To lay out; to contrive; to design; to plan.

* Shakespeare

Lie ten nights awake carving the fashion of a new doublet.

Verb

To bring down the size, quantity, quality, value or intensity of something; to diminish, to lower, to impair.

* to reduce weight, speed, heat, expenses, price, personnel etc.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2012-01

, author=Stephen Ledoux , title=Behaviorism at 100 , volume=100, issue=1, page=60 , magazine= citation , passage=Becoming more aware of the progress that scientists have made on behavioral fronts can reduce the risk that other natural scientists will resort to mystical agential accounts when they exceed the limits of their own disciplinary training.}}

To lose weight.

To bring to an inferior rank; to degrade, to demote.

* to reduce a sergeant to the ranks

* An ancient but reduced family. --.

* Nothing so excellent but a man may fasten upon something belonging to it, to reduce it. --.

* Having reduced their foe to misery beneath their fears. -- .

* Hester Prynne was shocked at the condition to which she found the clergyman reduced . --.

*

Neither [Jones] nor I (in 1966) could conceive of reducing our "science" to the ultimate absurdity of reading Finnish newspapers almost a century and a half old in order to establish "priority."

To humble; to conquer; to subdue; to capture.

* to reduce a province or a fort

To bring to an inferior state or condition.

* to reduce a city to ashes

(cooking) To decrease the liquid content of food by boiling much of its water off.

(chemistry) To add electrons / hydrogen or to remove oxygen.

(metallurgy) To produce metal from ore by removing nonmetallic elements in a smelter.

(mathematics) To simplify an equation or formula without changing its value.

(legal) To convert to written form (Usage note: this verb almost always take the phrase "to writing").

* It is important that all business contracts be reduced to writing.

(medicine) To perform a reduction; to restore a fracture or dislocation to the correct alignment.

(military) To reform a line or column from (a square).