Wiktionary

minimize

English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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From Latin minimus ‎ -ize.[1]

Pronunciation

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Verb

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minimize (third-person singular simple present minimizes, present participle minimizing, simple past and past participle minimized)

  1. (transitive) To make (something) smaller or as small as possible; shrink; reduce.
    We have to minimize the budget.
    Try to minimize your biases.
    • 1948, Willard Price, Roving South, Rio Grande to Patagonia, New York, N.Y.: J. Day Co., →OCLC, page 13:
      Terry, author of the indispensable Terry's Guide to Mexico, has a name for it – atrabiliousness. "The defect of many of the murals," he says, speaking of those in the orphan asylum, "is the facial atrabiliousness of some of the subjects. To the observer it minimizes the grandeur of the conception […] "
    • 1954, Instruments and Control Systems - Volume 27, page 1466:
      For accurate stopping, the drive must incorporate means for minimizing inertia overdrift.
    • 2023, Jacqueline B. Helfgott, Copycat Crime:
      One way to minimize or mitigate the copycat effect is to deemphasize the perpetrator and deglorify the violence in real and fictional stories.
  2. (transitive) To relegate or assign (something) to a less insignificant status; diminish.
    The insurance adjuster tried to minimize the extent of the damage to lessen the company's exposure to liability.
  3. (computing, transitive, graphical user interface) To remove (a window) from the main display area, collapsing it to an icon or caption.
    I didn't close anything, but I minimized all the windows so I could see the desktop.
  4. (transitive) To treat (someone) in a slighting manner.
    • 1993, Jan McDaniel, One Golden Summer, page 95:
      […] father who had never openly minimized him or anything he did […]

Translations

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References

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  1. ^ “minimize, v.”, in OED Online  ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.

Portuguese

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Verb

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minimize

  1. inflection of minimizar:
    1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
    2. third-person singular imperative
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