Reduce vs Avoid - What's the difference?
reduce | avoid |
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=
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 . --.
*
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).
To keep away from; to keep clear of; to endeavor not to meet; to shun; to abstain from.
:I try to avoid the company of gamblers.
*1526 , Bible , tr. William Tyndale, Matthew 4:
*:The devyllsayde unto hym: all these will I geve the, iff thou wilt faull doune and worship me. Then sayde Jesus unto hym. Avoyde Satan.
*Milton
*:What need a man forestall his date of grief, / And run to meet what he would most avoid ?
*Macaulay
*:He carefully avoided every act which could goad them into open hostility.
*{{quote-news, year=2012, date=June 19, author=Phil McNulty, work=BBC Sport
, title= (obsolete) To make empty; to clear.
:(Wyclif)
To make void, to annul; to refute (especially a contract).
*Spenser
*:How can these grants of the king's be avoided ?
(legal) To defeat or evade; to invalidate. Thus, in a replication, the plaintiff may deny the defendant's plea, or confess it, and avoid it by stating new matter.
:(Blackstone)
(obsolete) To emit or throw out; to void; as, to avoid excretions.
:(Sir Thomas Browne)
(obsolete) To leave, evacuate; to leave as empty, to withdraw or come away from.
*:
*:Anone they encountred to gyders / and he with the reed shelde smote hym soo hard that he bare hym ouer to the erthe / There with anone came another Knyght of the castel / and he was smyten so sore that he auoyded his fadel
*Francis Bacon
*:Six of us only stayed, and the rest avoided the room.
(obsolete) To get rid of.
:(Shakespeare)
(obsolete) To retire; to withdraw, depart, go away.
(obsolete) To become void or vacant.
In transitive terms the difference between reduce and avoid
is that reduce is to bring to an inferior state or condition while avoid is to keep away from; to keep clear of; to endeavor not to meet; to shun; to abstain from.In transitive legal terms the difference between reduce and avoid
is that reduce is to convert to written form (Usage note: this verb almost always take the phrase "to writing") while avoid is to defeat or evade; to invalidate. Thus, in a replication, the plaintiff may deny the defendant's plea, or confess it, and avoid it by stating new matter.reduce
English
Verb
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.}}
- 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."
Synonyms
* (to bring down) cut, decrease, lowerAntonyms
* (to bring down) increaseSee also
* reducing agentReferences
* ----avoid
English
Verb
England 1-0 Ukraine, passage=England could have met world and European champions Spain but that eventuality was avoided by Sweden's 2-0 win against France, and Rooney's first goal in a major tournament since scoring twice in the 4-2 victory over Croatia in Lisbon at Euro 2004.}}