Reduce

Latin redÅ«cere, present active infinitive of redÅ«cÅ ("reduce"); from re- ("back"), + dÅ«cÅ ("lead"). See duke, and compare with redoubt.

Full definition of reduce

(transitive) 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.
2012-01, Stephen Ledoux, Behaviorism at 100, 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 reduce a sergeant to the ranks
An ancient but reduced family. --Sir Walter Scott.
Nothing so excellent but a man may fasten upon something belonging to it, to reduce it. --John Tillotson.
Having reduced their foe to misery beneath their fears. -- John Milton.
Hester Prynne was shocked at the condition to which she found the clergyman reduced. --Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Schuster Hepaticae V|viiiNeither 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."

(transitive, cooking) To decrease the liquid content of food by boiling much of its water off.
(transitive, chemistry) To add electrons
hydrogen or to remove oxygen.
(transitive, metallurgy) To produce metal from ore by removing nonmetallic elements in a smelter.
(transitive, mathematics) To simplify an equation or formula without changing its value.
(transitive, legal) To convert to written form (Usage note: this verb almost always take the phrase "to writing").

(transitive, medicine) To perform a reduction; to restore a fracture or dislocation to the correct alignment.
(transitive, military) To reform a line or column from (a square).