downplay

English

Etymology

Synthetic form of the phrase play down. By surface analysis, down- +‎ play.

Pronunciation

• Audio (US):

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Verb

downplay (third-person singular simple present downplays, present participle downplaying, simple past and past participle downplayed)

1. (transitive) To de-emphasize; to present or portray as less important or consequential.

   He would sometimes downplay his Princeton education by saying simply that he went to school in New Jersey.

   • 2023 April 17, Will Sommer, “‘Stop the Steal’ Organizer Apologizes After Being Accused of Asking Teen Boys for D*ck Pics”, in The Daily Beast‎^[1], archived from the original on 20 April 2023:

     [Milo] Yiannopoulos, whose own career as a far-right pundit imploded in 2017 after remarks he had made downplaying the seriousness of pedophilia surfaced, claims he has more damaging videos to release about [Ali] Alexander and [Nick] Fuentes.

Usage notes

• The synonymous alternative form play down is slightly more formal, or slightly less informal.

Synonyms

• play down
• trivialize
• understate

Derived terms

• downplayer

Translations

to de-emphasize; to present or portray something as less important or consequential

• Afrikaans: please add this translation if you can
• Arabic: قَلَّلَ (qallala)
• Bulgarian: омаловажавам (bg) (omalovažavam)
• Catalan: empetitir (ca), minimitzar (ca)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 淡化 (zh) (dànhuà)

• Czech: bagatelizovat (cs) impf
• Dutch: bagatelliseren (nl), geringschatten (nl), minimaliseren (nl)
• Finnish: vähätellä (fi), bagatellisoida (fi)
• French: minimiser (fr)
• Galician: please add this translation if you can
• German: herunterspielen (de), verharmlosen (de), kleinreden (de), bagatellisieren (de)
• Greek: please add this translation if you can
• Hebrew: גִמֵּד (he) (giméd), הִצְנִיעַ (he) (hitsnía)
• Icelandic: please add this translation if you can
• Italian: minimizzare (it), sminuire (it)
• Japanese: 矮小化する (ja) (waishōka suru)
• Korean: please add this translation if you can
• Latin: please add this translation if you can
• Macedonian: омало́важи (omalóvaži)
• Mongolian: please add this translation if you can
• Norwegian: please add this translation if you can
• Polish: lekceważyć (pl) impf, zlekceważyć (pl) pf, bagatelizować (pl) impf, zbagatelizować (pl) pf, bimbać (pl) impf (colloquial)
• Portuguese: minimizar (pt)
• Russian: преуменьша́ть (ru) (preumenʹšátʹ)
• Serbo-Croatian: please add this translation if you can
• Spanish: minimizar (es), quitar hierro (es), quitar importancia, quitar importancia, menospreciar (es)
• Swedish: please add this translation if you can
• Ukrainian: приме́ншувати impf (pryménšuvaty), приме́ншити pf (pryménšyty)
• Welsh: bychanu (cy), lleihau (cy)

Anagrams

• play down, playdown