Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To minimize the significance of; play down: downplayed the bad news.
Wiktionary
- v. transitive To de-emphasize; to present or portray as less important or consequential.
WordNet 3.0
- v. understate the importance or quality of
- v. represent as less significant or important
Etymologies
- down- + play (Wiktionary)
Examples
“What Glenn and other critics seem to downplay is that media coverage tends to be negative about everything.”
“Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton last night criticized the Bush administration for its response to Iran's nuclear program, saying it had chosen to "downplay" the crisis over the past several years.”
“Did he "downplay" the significance of Florida and Ohio or play up the significance of other states - VA, NV, CO, MO, NC ... etc”
“It's a no-win situation, if you ignore the character's race it means that you are trying to "downplay" it, so audiences wont notice.”
“Early on they began the kind of downplay of this whole she needs to have a hefty double-digit number, a hefty double-digit win, saying look, Barack Obama has spent a lot of money in this state.”
“And really, in a move, a strategy by the White House to kind of downplay his significance, really portray him as a bit player, one line for Iran saying that it was really part of a brutal regime that put down its own citizens.”
“Sharma says companies may be trying to "downplay" the problem, but "it is certainly a big issue.”
“Clinton administration approach to that has been to kind of downplay the threat of that technology.”
Betrayal: How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security
“We made a deliberate decision to kind of downplay the Inaugural and not to try to tie too much of that to fundraising, so we're going to have work harder this year.”
“It accused the IFP of trying to "downplay" Tuesday's invasion”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘downplay’.
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Potpourri
eponymous, aa, pulchritude, gizmo, macabre, sui generis, solecism, solipsism, eldritch, samizdat, queue, obsequious and 469 more...
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Misdirector's Cut
Hey...
—> —> —> —> —> —> —> —> —> —> —> —> —> —> —> LOOK OVER THERE! —> —> —>
...sneaky, legerdemain, flimflam, unwittingly, clandestine, hornswoggle, sleveen, subversion, espionage, incognito, subreption, gank and 147 more...
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General
attain, stretch, lever, flock, fraught, taunt, dub, deceive, toss, sentient, stale, brew and 52 more...
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MCI3
Assigntment MCI, about SCR
Tweets
Looking for tweets for downplay.
oroboros According to Daniel Shore this word and others like it arose in response to the need to cut costs during journalism's "cablese" (his word) days, where words cost 5-cents apiece ("Real money in those days."). Thus, 'play down' became 'downplay' and a nickel was saved. With the advent of teletype machines the cost was determined by the letter, not the word, but the neologisms were here to stay at that point. May 19, 2008