How to spell reduce

hear itre·duce/rɪ'dus/verbRules and real life

What it means: To make smaller or less.

In a sentence: You can reduce waste by recycling bottles and cans.

The part people get wrong

Watch for an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear. Often misspelled as reduece or redus.

Same family: reduction, reduced, reducing, reducible, irreducible. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: “Reduce” comes from Latin 'reducere', meaning 'to lead back' or 'bring back'. Over time, the sense of 'bringing back' shifted into the modern idea of 'making smaller' or 'cutting down'.

Patterns it uses: The unstressed vowel (schwa) · Prefixes keep every letter

Try spelling it

You will hear the word and a sentence. Type it and press Enter. Then four more words from the same level, so you know where you stand.

Words like this

refund · funeral · measure · certificate · necessarily · calendar · definitely · geography

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