Verb

To describe or characterize something by listing its qualities.

To make someone, or to become competent or eligible for some position or task.

* Macaulay

He had qualified himself for municipal office by taking the oaths to the sovereigns in possession.

To certify or license someone for something.

To modify, limit, restrict or moderate something; especially to add conditions or requirements for an assertion to be true.

*1598 , Shakespeare,

*:O! never say that I was false of heart,

*:Though absence seem'd my flame to qualify

To mitigate, alleviate (something); to make less disagreeable.

* 1590 , Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene , II.vi:

he balmes and herbes thereto applyde, / And euermore with mighty spels them charmd, / That in short space he has them qualifyde , / And him restor'd to health, that would haue algates dyde.

To compete successfully in some stage of a competition and become eligible for the next stage.

To give individual quality to; to modulate; to vary; to regulate.

* Sir Thomas Browne

It hath no larynx to qualify the sound.

(juggling) To throw and catch each object at least twice.

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.