Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Diminution; abatement.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun rare Diminution.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The act of
diminishing ;reducing in size, quantity, or quality.
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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The cap on damage awards for pain and suffering (legally described as a diminishment in the quality life) may increase litigation.
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Too many people, I think, and liberal religionists especially, conflate the notion of "tradition" with stasis or complacency, and read the idea of covenantal authority as some kind of diminishment rather than potential enlargement of agency.
Philocrites: Philip Rieff on charisma, culture, and prophecy. 2007
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We favor that kind of diminishment as inducement for the two sides to negotiate in earnest.
JSOnline.com 2010
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There is no spiritual justification for invading a country with weapons, or launching a pious attack that spreads fear and motivates the diminishment of creative expression.
The Bushman Way of Tracking God PhD Bradford Keeney 2010
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The very title of "The Pale King" is suggestive of grandeur in a state of sad diminishment.
A Cure for Head-Exploding Brilliance James Campbell 2011
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The very fact that actually committing words to paper will inevitably result in some quality of diminishment in the idea itself is probably what led Cioran to say, I think it was in The Trouble with Being Born, that as he grew older it became progressively more difficult for him to summon the motivation to blacken a page.
Archive 2010-03-01 2010
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High unemployment, disparity widening between rich and poor, and the diminishment of a solid middle class.
Jeff Wald: Government Is Bullshit Led by Bullshit Press Jeff Wald 2011
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The very fact that actually committing words to paper will inevitably result in some quality of diminishment in the idea itself is probably what led Cioran to say, I think it was in The Trouble with Being Born, that as he grew older it became progressively more difficult for him to summon the motivation to blacken a page.
Dark Awakenings and Cosmic Horror : The Lovecraft News Network 2010
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High unemployment, disparity widening between rich and poor, and the diminishment of a solid middle class.
Jeff Wald: Government Is Bullshit Led by Bullshit Press Jeff Wald 2011
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Instead of a great mind and literary master, she became an emblem of suffering and diminishment.
The Good Apprentice Martin Rubin 2011
bilby commented on the word diminishment
"The whole history of America since World War II caused an inertial transfer of power toward the executive branch. The monopoly on use of nuclear weaponry, the cult of the commander in chief, the worldwide network of military bases to maintain nuclear alert and supremacy, the secret intelligence agencies, the entire national security state, the classification and clearance systems, the expansion of state secrets, the withholding of evidence and information, the permanent emergency that has melded World War II with the cold war and the cold war with the 'war on terror'—all these make a vast and intricate structure that may not yield to effort at dismantling it. Sixty-eight straight years of war emergency powers (1941–2009) have made the abnormal normal, and constitutional diminishment the settled order."
- Gary Wills, Entangled Giant, nybooks.com, 10 Sep 2009.
September 19, 2009