Verb

(en verb)

To modify.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-10, volume=408, issue=8848, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= A new prescription , passage=As the world's drug habit shows, governments are failing in their quest to monitor every London window-box and Andean hillside for banned plants. But even that Sisyphean task looks easy next to the fight against synthetic drugs. No sooner has a drug been blacklisted than chemists adjust their recipe and start churning out a subtly different one.}}

To improve or rectify.

* {{quote-magazine, title=Towards the end of poverty

, date=2013-06-01, volume=407, issue=8838, page=11, magazine=(The Economist) citation , passage=But poverty’s scourge is fiercest below $1.25 (the average of the 15 poorest countries’ own poverty lines, measured in 2005 dollars and adjusted for differences in purchasing power): people below that level live lives that are poor, nasty, brutish and short.}}

To settle an insurance claim.

To change to fit circumstances.

Verb

(es)

To make smaller.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2012-12-14

, author=Simon Jenkins, authorlink=Simon Jenkins, volume=188, issue=2, page=23 , date=2012-12-21, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= We mustn't overreact to North Korea boys' toys , passage=The threat of terrorism to the British lies in the overreaction to it of British governments. Each one in turn clicks up the ratchet of surveillance, intrusion and security. Each one diminishes liberty.}}

To become smaller.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-20, volume=408, issue=8845, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Old soldiers? , passage=Whether modern, industrial man is less or more warlike than his hunter-gatherer ancestors is impossible to determine.

To lessen the authority or dignity of; to put down; to degrade; to abase; to weaken.

* Robynson (More's Utopia)

This doth nothing diminish their opinion.

* Bible, Ezekiel xxix. 15

I will diminish them, that they shall no more rule over the nations.

* Milton

O thou at whose sight all the stars / Hide their diminished heads.

To taper.

To disappear gradually.

To take away; to subtract.

* Bible, Deuteronomy iv. 2

Neither shall ye diminish aught from it.

(music) To reduce a perfect or minor interval by a semitone.