Reduce vs Smaller - What's the difference?
reduce | smaller |
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).
(small)
Not large or big; insignificant; few in numbers or size.
* , chapter=5
, title= * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-22, volume=407, issue=8841, page=70, magazine=(The Economist)
, title= (figuratively) Young, as a child.
(writing, incomparable) Minuscule or lowercase, referring to written letters.
Envincing little worth or ability; not large-minded; paltry; mean.
* Carlyle
Not prolonged in duration; not extended in time; short.
In a small fashion.
* (William Shakespeare), (w, A Midsummer Night's Dream) , Act I, scene 2, line 49:
In or into small pieces.
* 2009 , Ingrid Hoffman, CBS Early Morning for September 28, 2009 (transcription)
(obsolete) To a small extent.
* (rfdate) (William Shakespeare), Sonnets , "Lucrece", line 1273
Any part of something that is smaller or slimmer than the rest, now usually with anatomical reference to the back.
(UK, in the plural) Underclothes.
(obsolete) To make little or less.
To become small; to dwindle.
* Thomas Hardy
As a verb reduce
is to bring down the size, quantity, quality, value or intensity of something; to diminish, to lower, to impair.As an adjective smaller is
comparative of small.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
* ----smaller
English
Adjective
(head)Anagrams
*small
English
Adjective
(er)The Mirror and the Lamp, passage=Here, in the transept and choir, where the service was being held, one was conscious every moment of an increasing brightness; colours glowing vividly beneath the circular chandeliers, and the rows of small lights on the choristers' desks flashed and sparkled in front of the boys' faces, deep linen collars, and red neckbands.}}
Engineers of a different kind, passage=Private-equity nabobs bristle at being dubbed mere financiers. Piling debt onto companies’ balance-sheets is only a small part of what leveraged buy-outs are about, they insist. Improving the workings of the businesses they take over is just as core to their calling, if not more so. Much of their pleading is public-relations bluster.}}
- A true delineation of the smallest man is capable of interesting the greatest man.
- a small space of time
Synonyms
* (not large or big) little, microscopic, minuscule, minute, tiny; see also * little, wee (Scottish), young * (of written letters) lowercase, minusculeAntonyms
* See also * (not large or big) capital, big, generous (said of an amount of something given), large * adult, grown-up, old * (of written letters) big, capital, majuscule, uppercaseDerived terms
* small arm * small arms * small beer * small calorie * small-cell lung cancer * small change * small claims court * smallclothes * smaller European elm bark beetle * small forward * small fry * smallgoods * smallholder * smallholding * small hours * small intestine * smallish * small-minded * smallmouth * smallmouth bass * smallmouth black bass * smallness * small potatoes * smallpox * smalls * small-scale * small screen * small stuff * smallsword * small talk * small-time * * small wonder * twice as small * twice as small asAdverb
(er)- That's all one: you shall play it in a mask, and / you may speak as small as you will.
- That's going to go in there. We've got some chives small chopped as well.
- It small avails my mood.
Derived terms
* writ smallNoun
(en noun)Derived terms
* small of the backVerb
(en verb)- And smalled till she was nought at all.