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diminished

adjective

Simple meaning

Made to seem less important, impressive.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

dihminisht

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US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

dɪˈmɪnɪʃt

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

adjective

  1. Made to seem less important, impressive, or valuable

  2. Lessened, reduced

  3. music

    Reduced by a semitone

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B2 · Upper Intermediate (estimated)
Frequency
Moderately Common
Typical Use
Neutral / general English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: Made to seem less important, impressive, or valuable

Used this way, diminished is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly warm, approving pull. It suits considered writing and prepared speech.

Emotional tone
Positive
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Moderate
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Serious and weighty
Usage feel
Formal and precise

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

diminished capacitydiminished responsibilitydiminished seventhgreatly diminishedgradually diminishedconsiderably diminished

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Similar Words, What’s the Difference?

Close in meaning, but not always interchangeable.

  • belittled

    Made to seem smaller or less (especially in worth).

  • weakened

    Reduced; made less strong.

  • reduced

    Made less in size or amount or degree.

Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Inflected forms

Grammatical variations of the same word.

  • diminishverbBase word

    Decrease in size, extent, or range.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • diminished archnounCompound term

    An arch whose height is less than half its width.

Related Words

Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: made to seem less important or impressive

lessened

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.