Reduced

How to spell reduced

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce reduced

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does reduced mean?

1. verbPast tense of reduce: made smaller, lower, or less in amount, size, or degree.
2. adjectiveMade lower or smaller than the standard level, especially in price or quantity.

Reduced in a sentence

• verb

  The company reduced its prices to clear the old stock.

• adjective

  The supermarket sells reduced items on a shelf near the entrance each evening.

• verb

  Careful budgeting reduced the family's monthly spending considerably.

• adjective

  Passengers travelling at off-peak times pay a reduced fare.

Where does reduced come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the past tense and past participle of the verb 'reduce', which comes from the Latin reducere, meaning literally 'to lead back' or 'to bring back', built from the prefix re- 'back' and the verb ducere 'to lead'. English borrowed the word through Old French in the late 1300s, and at first it carried that original sense of bringing something back to an earlier state or place. Over time the meaning narrowed and shifted toward 'bringing down' in size, amount, or rank, so that to reduce came to mean making something smaller or lower. The same ducere root still leads through a crowd of familiar English words, including 'conduct', 'produce', 'introduce', and 'duke'. The spelling trap is mostly the silent stretch in the middle: the 'duc' is pronounced 'dyoos', which can tempt writers toward a phonetic respelling.

How the word is built

• re- (back)
• duc (from Latin ducere: to lead)
• -ed (past tense/participle suffix)