Word.ws English Dictionary

dumbing down

dumbing down is the present participle and gerund 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 dumbing down

What is dumbing down the present participle and gerund of?
Dumbing down is the present participle and gerund of dumb down.

Words near dumbing down in the dictionary

  1. dumbified
  2. dumbifies
  3. dumbify
  4. dumbifying
  5. dumbing
  6. dumbing down
  7. dumbing out
  8. dumbish
  9. dumbishly
  10. dumbitude
  11. dumbkopf

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dumbing 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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