Word.ws English Dictionary

dumbed down

dumbed down is the simple past and past participle of dumb down.

Meaning of dumb down

Verb

dumb down (third-person singular simple present dumbs down, present participle dumbing down, simple past and past participle dumbed down)

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To convey some subject matter in simple terms, avoiding technical or academic language, especially in a way that is considered condescending.
    • The public won't understand this concept. We need to dumb down our explanation of it.
    Synonyms:
    oversimplify, simplify, put in layman's terms
  2. (idiomatic, intransitive) To become simpler in expression or content; to become unacceptably simplistic.
    • Television has really dumbed down over the past ten years.

Questions about dumbed down

What is dumbed down the simple past and past participle of?
Dumbed down is the simple past and past participle of dumb down.

Words near dumbed down in the dictionary

  1. dumbdumb
  2. dumbdumbs
  3. dumbec
  4. dumbecs
  5. dumbed
  6. dumbed down
  7. dumbed out
  8. dumbed-down
  9. dumbeg
  10. dumbegs
  11. dumbek

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dumbed down (page history and authors); dumb 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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Cite this entry: “dumbed down.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dumbed_down. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.