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 ease a burden, particularly worry; make less painful; to comfort.

* 1893 , (Henry George), The Condition of Labor: An Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII, p. 104:

*:All that charity can do where injustice exists is here and there to somewhat mollify the effects of injustice.

* 1997 , A Government Reinvented: A Study of Alberta's Deficit Elimination Program, p. 408:

*:The draft Charter School Handbook issued in November 1994 sought to mollify concerns over teacher quality, if not ATA membership, by requiring teacher certification.

To appease (anger), pacify, gain the good will of.

* 1867 , , chapter 2:

Although this invitation was accompanied with a curtsey that might have softened the heart of a church-warden, it by no means mollified the beadle.

* 1916 , , chapter 5:

The angry goat was quite mollified by the respectful tone in which he was addressed.

To soften; to make tender

* 1662 , , Book III, A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings of Dr. Henry More, p. 113:

"Nor is it any more difficulty for him to mollifie what is hard, then it is to harden what is so soft and fluid as the Aire."

* 1724 , (William Burkitt), Expository Notes, with Practical Observations on the New Testament, p. 102:

*:By thy kindness thou wilt melt and mollify his spirit towards thee, as hardest metals are melted by coals of fire …