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).

Verb

(en verb)

To make less; to diminish; to reduce.

* Calamy

Charity shall lessen his punishment.

* Atterbury

St. Paul chose to magnify his office when ill men conspired to lessen it.

* {{quote-news

, year=2011 , date=December 16 , author=Denis Campbell , title=Hospital staff 'lack skills to cope with dementia patients' , work=Guardian citation , page= , passage=Many hospitals have not taken simple steps to lessen the distress and confusion which dementia sufferers' often feel on being somewhere so unfamiliar – such as making signs large and easy to read, using colour schemes to help patients find their way around unfamiliar wards and not putting family mementoes such as photographs nearby.}}

To become less.