Minimize vs Simplify - What's the difference?
minimize | simplify |
To make (something) as small or as insignificant as possible.
(computing, transitive, graphical user interface) To remove (a window) from the main display area, collapsing it to an icon or caption.
To make simpler, either by reducing in complexity, reducing to component parts, or making easier to understand.
To become simpler.
* 2006 , Karen Oslund, “Reading Backwards: Language Politics and Cultural Identity in Nineteenth-Century Scandinavia”, in David L. Hoyt and Karen Oslund (editors), The Study of Language and the Politics of Community in Global Context , Lexington Books, ISBN 978-0-7391-0955-7, page 126:
In transitive terms the difference between minimize and simplify
is that minimize is to make (something) as small or as insignificant as possible while simplify is to make simpler, either by reducing in complexity, reducing to component parts, or making easier to understand.minimize
English
Alternative forms
* (l) (non-Oxford British spelling)Verb
(minimiz)- I didn't close anything, but I minimized all the windows so I could see the desktop.
simplify
English
Verb
(en-verb)- Thus, throughout the nineteenth century, linguists generally held that more grammatically complex languages were older and that languages tended to simplify over time—the four grammatical cases of German as contrasted with the seven of Latin, for example.