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View synonyms for reductive

reductive

[ ri-duhk-tiv ]

adjective

  1. of or relating to reduction; serving to reduce or abridge:

    an urgent need for reductive measures.

  2. of or relating to change from one form to another:

    reductive chemical processes.

  3. employing an analysis of a complex subject into a simplified, less detailed form; of, pertaining to, or employing reductionism; reductionistic.


noun

  1. something causing or inducing a reductive process.

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Other Words From

  • re·ductive·ly adverb
  • re·ductive·ness noun
  • anti·re·ductive adjective
  • nonre·ductive adjective

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Word History and Origins

Origin of reductive1

First recorded in 1625–35; reduct(ion) + -ive

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Example Sentences

So that’s a little bit reductive to say that all of technology, all of mathematical shortcuts, have been reduced to just Twitter alone.

That’s a really reductive statement, so I’d never say that, but if you want to say it, I won’t stop you.

From Vox

The thought that I stand for all of The Post — a newsroom of over a thousand journalists — is, of course, quite reductive.

This truncated form of information, as opposed to knowledge, that we get presented with online is often really reductive, binary and dogmatic.

From Time

Describing himself seems "unnecessarily reductive," though he acknowledges self-definition can be empowering for marginalized communities.

Because it's too cautious to dramatize real problems and too reductive to tackle them realistically.

But it would be reductive to make that parallel a blanket one.

He had read a positive review of his own work that nonetheless struck him as reductive and inaccurate.

It is all too easy to be heavy-handed and reductive, something of which Freud himself was guilty on many occasions.

Eric Foner complains that Spielberg's Lincoln is unacceptably reductive.

Now that the law compels a list of dangerous drugs on the label, the cures proceed admittedly by a reductive principle.

At a boiling heat, in presence of dilute acids, it is split up, yielding a reductive sugar.

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reduction ratioreductivism