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deflate

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de⋅flate

  [di-fleyt] verb, -flat⋅ed, -flat⋅ing.
Use deflate in a Sentence
–verb (used with object)
1. to release the air or gas from (something inflated, as a balloon): They deflated the tires slightly to allow the truck to drive under the overpass.
2. to depress or reduce (a person or a person's ego, hopes, spirits, etc.); puncture; dash: Her rebuff thoroughly deflated me.
3. to reduce (currency, prices, etc.) from an inflated condition; to affect with deflation.
–verb (used without object)
4. to become deflated.
Origin:
1890–95; < L dēflātus blown off, away (ptp. of dēflāre), equiv. to dē- de- + fl(āre) to blow + -ātus -ate 1

Related forms:
de⋅fla⋅tor, noun
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
Cite This Source Link To deflate
California is losing jobs
Sacramento is drowning in red ink facing another mammoth 2010 deficit
www.MegWhitman.com/
de·flate   (dĭ-flāt')   
v.   de·flat·ed, de·flat·ing, de·flates

v.   tr.

    1. To release contained air or gas from.

    2. To collapse by releasing contained air or gas.

    3. To reduce the amount or availability of (currency or credit), effecting a decline in prices.

    4. To produce deflation in (an economy).

  2. To reduce or lessen the size or importance of: Losing the contest deflated my ego.

  3. Economics

    1. To reduce the amount or availability of (currency or credit), effecting a decline in prices.

    2. To produce deflation in (an economy).

v.   intr.
To be or become deflated: The balloon deflated slowly.

[de- + (in)flate.]
de·fla'tor n.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Word Origin & History

deflate 
1891, in reference to balloons, coinage based on inflate. L. deflare meant "to blow away," but in the modern word the prefix is taken in the sense of "down." Deflation in reference to currency or economic situations is from 1920.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
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Computing Dictionary

deflate file format, compression
A compression standard derived from LZ77; it is reportedly used in zip, gzip, PKZIP, and png, among others.
Unlike LZW, deflate compression does not use patented compression algorithms.
Used as a verb to mean to compress (not decompress!) a file which has been compressed using deflate compression. The opposite, inflate, means to decompress data which has been deflated.
Deflate is described in RFC 1951.
(1997-06-21)

The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © 1993-2007 Denis Howe
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