reduce: [14] ‘Lessen, diminish’ is a comparatively recent semantic development for reduce. Its Latin ancestor was certainly not used in that sense. This was redūcere, a compound verb formed from the prefix re- ‘back, again’ and dūcere ‘lead, bring’ (source of English duct, duke, educate, etc). It meant literally ‘bring back’, hence ‘restore’ and also ‘withdraw’.
The original ‘bring back’ made the journey to English, and even survived into the early 17th century (‘reducing often to my memory the conceit of that Roman stoic’, Sir Henry Wotton, Elements of Architecture 1624). The sense ‘lessen, diminish’ seems to be the result of a semantic progression from ‘bring back to a particular condition’ via ‘bring back to order’ and ‘bring to subjection’. => duct, duke, educate, introduce, produce, redoubt
reduce (v.)
late 14c., "bring back," from Old French reducer (14c.), from Latin reducere "lead back, bring back," figuratively "restore, replace," from re- "back" (see re-) + ducere "bring, lead" (see duke (n.)). Meaning "bring to an inferior condition" is 1570s; that of "bring to a lower rank" is 1640s (military reduce to ranks is from 1802); that of "subdue by force of arms" is 1610s. Sense of "to lower, diminish, lessen" is from 1787. Related: Reduced; reducing.
雙語例句
1. The job losses will reduce the total workforce to 7,000.
職位減少后，在職工人總數將減至7,000人。
來自柯林斯例句
2. He finally corrected his misstatement and offered to reduce the fee.
他終于糾正了自己的錯誤說法，提出要減少費用。
來自柯林斯例句
3. The plan is designed to reduce some of the company's mountainous debt.
該計劃旨在減少公司堆積如山的債務。
來自柯林斯例句
4. The agency should reduce turnaround time by 11 per cent.
該代理機構應削減11%的周轉時間。
來自柯林斯例句
5. They believed that controlling the money supply would reduce inflation.