Word.ws English Dictionary

dial down

dial down verb: to reduce or diminish in effect or intensity.

Verb

dial down (third-person singular simple present dials down, present participle (US) dialing down or (UK) dialling down, simple past and past participle (US) dialed down or (UK) dialled down)

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To reduce or diminish in effect or intensity.
    • Let's dial down the anger in this conversation.
    • We felt there was too much graphic detail in the first draft, and thus asked the writer to dial it down.

Forms of dial down

third-person singular presentdials down
present participle USdialing down
present participle UKdialling down
past participle USdialed down
past USdialed down
past participle UKdialled down
past UKdialled down

Questions about dial down

What does dial down mean?
Dial down means to reduce or diminish in effect or intensity.
What part of speech is dial down?
Dial down is a verb.
What is the past tense of dial down?
The past tense of dial down is dialed down.

Words near dial down in the dictionary

  1. Diakofto
  2. diakoptics
  3. Diakopto
  4. dial
  5. dial back
  6. dial down
  7. dial down a notch
  8. dial gauge
  9. dial gauges
  10. dial in
  11. dial indicator

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dial down (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-dial down.ogg.

Cite this entry: “dial down.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dial_down. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.