Word.ws English Dictionary

dumbs down

dumbs down is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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 dumbs down

What is dumbs down the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Dumbs down is the third-person singular simple present indicative of dumb down.

Words near dumbs down in the dictionary

  1. Dumbrava Roșie
  2. Dumbrăveni
  3. Dumbrăvești
  4. Dumbrăvița
  5. dumbs
  6. dumbs down
  7. dumbs out
  8. dumbshit
  9. dumbshits
  10. dumbshow
  11. dumbsize

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dumbs 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: “dumbs down.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dumbs_down. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.