as in diluting
to alter (something) for the worse with the addition of foreign or lower-grade substances
watered down the cocktails while jacking up their prices
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Recent Examples of watering down
Stop watering down your message to avoid offending anyone.
—
Jodie Cook, Forbes.com, 2 Sep. 2025
Jodie Cook, Forbes.com, 2 Sep. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for watering down
Verb
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Cleaver's Fifth District, which encompasses much of Kansas City, will be split across three different districts, diluting Democratic voting strength by incorporating Republican-leaning rural areas.—
Adeola Adeosun,
MSNBC Newsweek,
28 Sep. 2025
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On the other hand, an otherwise strong voting bloc can be marginalized by splintering its voters among several districts, thereby diluting its impact.—
Jan Goldsmith,
San Diego Union-Tribune,
28 Sep. 2025
Verb
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Miami sends four for the pass rush, loading up against the right side of Florida’s offensive line with Bain and Akheem Mesidor, with the Gators keeping seven back in protection.—
Jordan McPherson,
Miami Herald,
24 Sep. 2025
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BMCs also enable some of the most sensitive operations, such as reflashing the firmware for the UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) that’s responsible for loading the server OS when booting.—
Dan Goodin,
ArsTechnica,
24 Sep. 2025
Verb
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Some are discontinuing various product lines, and others are cutting workers or closing altogether.—
Andrea Riquier,
USA Today,
27 Sep. 2025
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The bass is a hard thing to really get cutting, but also representing the bottom.—
Brian Hiatt,
Rolling Stone,
27 Sep. 2025
Verb
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China’s is arguably the most important; whatever the world’s most-polluting country does will determine the planet’s climate trajectory.—
Ella Nilsen,
CNN Money,
24 Sep. 2025
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Transition finance, where financial firms actively pursue opportunities to fund polluting companies’ emissions reductions, has become a hot area.—
Justin Worland,
Time,
23 Sep. 2025
Verb
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Chelsea are sorely lacking leadership and self-assurance, hardly surprising given the inexperience throughout a quickly thinning squad.—
Thom Harris,
New York Times,
28 Sep. 2025
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October can be the sweet spot with color still lingering in the lower elevations and crowds thinning all over the park.—
Graham Averill,
Outside,
26 Sep. 2025
Verb
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The researchers had shown in 2023 that parasitic scraps of DNA could spread within bacterial populations by hitching rides on the tails of infecting viruses.—
Elie Dolgin,
IEEE Spectrum,
25 Sep. 2025
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And infecting a living cow is harder, says Robert de Vries, a virologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, who was also not involved in the study.—
Chris Simms,
Scientific American,
25 Sep. 2025
Verb
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Hidden resentments could be poisoning your work-life balance.—
USA TODAY,
USA Today,
21 Sep. 2025
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That same day, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole for fatally poisoning Angela.—
Doc Louallen,
ABC News,
19 Sep. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Watering down.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/watering%20down. Accessed 1 Oct. 2025.
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