?a1425 tr. Guy de Chauliac Grande Chirurgie (N.Y. Acad. Med.) f. 20 (MED) Among þise iuncturez the more hard to dislocacioun & to reducing is þat of þe litel fote.

c1443 R. Pecock Reule of Crysten Religioun (1927) 465 To be ȝouen to writers and expowners, wiþout eny ferþer reducing and resoluyng into þe groundis whiche þo writers and expowners leneden to.

1484 W. Caxton tr. G. de la Tour-Landry Bk. Knight of Tower (1971) Ded. 4 I humbly requyre and byseche my sayd good lady to pardonne me of my symple and rude reducynge.

1532 T. Cromwell in R. B. Merriman Life & Lett. T. Cromwell (1902) I. 349 For the reducing of the same his vntrew purpose to effecte.

?1568 L. Evans Abridgem. Logique sig. B.vij The turning of propositions..serueth for the euident opening of them,..and for the reducing of the seconde, and thirde figure into the first.

a1599 E. Spenser View Present State Ireland (Rawl. B478) (1934) 110 So good an acte..as the reducinge of suche a greate people to Christendome.

1643 J. Milton Doctr. Divorce 10 Mariage cannot be honorable for the meer reducing and terminating of lust between two.

1646 E. Massey Let. in H. Cary Memorials Great Civil War (1842) I. 90 I made an humble request..on behalf of..my brigade, upon a report made unto me of some command for the reducing of them.

1671 W. Salmon Synopsis Medicinæ iii. xxvi. 474 The reducing of any thing into a fine powder, by grynding it on a Marble.

1711 Fingall MSS in 10th Rep. Royal Comm. Hist. MSS (1885) App. v. 197 The reduceing of them to mendicancy and hard shifts of liveing.

1720 London Gaz. No. 5813/1 To facilitate the reducing of Palermo.

1790 R. Beatson Naval & Mil. Mem. I. 106 Although the reducing of the Havannah was strongly recommended by his Majesty's instructions, yet..success could not now be looked for.

1831 T. Keightley Mythol. Anc. Greece & Italy Pref. I mean by it [sc. the word pragmatics], the reducing of mythic narratives to historic truth, by altering or rejecting fabulous or improbable details.

1863 J. D. Dana Man. Geol. 558 The reducing of the level of the rivers.

1916 G. A. Coe Psychol. Relig. xi. 178 The reducing of inhibitions, the dropping of things from attention, not seldom makes the really important fact seem important.

1964 C. Dent Quantity Surv. by Computer iv. 37 The computer is required merely to square the dimensions and prepare and cast the abstract, leaving the actual reducing and billing to be carried out by hand.

1968 W. Kidd in W. French & W. Kidd Amer. Winners of Nobel Literary Prize Introd. 6 The reducing of men to mechanized puppets in a dehumanized machine age.

2001 D. D. Raphael Concepts of Justice (2003) i. iv. 33 The reducing of a man's human excellence by harming him does not imply the reducing of all human excellences.

1822 J. G. Children tr. J. J. Berzelius Use of Blowpipe in Chem. Anal. 48 The discoloration is the consequence of the hepar, or liver of sulphur, formed by the reducing action [Fr. l'action réductive; Sw. reducerande] of the charcoal.

1889 Internat. Ann. Anthonys Photogr. Bull. 151 This reducing action may produce a sub-oxide, sub-chloride, etc.

1938 R. Hum Chem. for Engin. Students xiv. 340 This solution is used in the indigo dyeing industry owing to the reducing action of the hydrosulphite.

1998 Stud. Conservation 43 49 By the reducing action of organic matter, magnetite Fe₃O₄ is formed.

1894 Labour Commission Gloss. Reducing boxes, the machines in which the operation before roving is performed by female labour.

1930 U.S. Patent 1,772,625 1/1 A further object of this invention is to provide a reducing box having a plurality of weakening and slotted lines positioned thereon.

2003 U.S. Patent US/2003/0094331 A1 2/2 Internally, the descent apparatus..has a reducing box..that fulfils the function of reducing the torque of the pinion.

1778 W. Blakey Let. 2 Feb. in Misc. Wks. (1790) ii. 93 This stone was for Madame Pompadour, as well as a fine reducing compass for drawing from large to small.

1872 H. Barnard Mil. Schools & Courses Instr. in Sci. & Art of War 309 Instruments generally employed in military surveying... Instruments for protracting the lines measured, viz.—The step measure, calliper compasses, beam compasses, dividing and reducing compasses.

1906 O. A. Kenyon tr. J. Claudel Handbk. Math. 333 The reducing compass is used for constructing similar figures according to a given proportion.

1673 J. Ray Coll. Eng. Words 115 The Litharge is brought to a reducing Furnace, and there with Charcoale only melted into Lead.

1701 W. Salmon Polygraphice (ed. 8) II. vii. iv. 484 Fix it and put it..into a reducing Furnace.

1852 Sci. Amer. 3 Apr. 226/4 The ore is slightly roasted, then stamped in a stamping mill, and placed in reducing furnaces.

2004 Jrnl. Power Sources 137 75/1 This problem was eventually solved by applying a fine particle chromium–nickel braze to the stack and heating it in a reducing furnace.

1867 Sci. Amer. 13 July 18/3 This is made to move automatically by reducing gearing from the shafting.]

1872 C. Morfit Pract. Treat. Pure Fertilizers v. 112 The reducing gear..serves to diminish the speed and increase the power derived from the main shaft.

2006 T. Roukas in K. Shetty et al. Food Biotechnol. (ed. 2) i. xv. 381 The disks..were connected to a single stainless steel shaft, which had bearings at both ends and was rotated by a variable speed motor using a reducing gear.

a1884 E. H. Knight Pract. Dict. Mech. Suppl. 746/2 Reducing Press, in sheet-metal working, an auxiliary press for the further deepening and drawing of articles partially struck up.

1909 N.Y. Times 10 July 13/6 Plain and universal tool grinders, shapers, Bliss reducing presses, foot presses.

1990 D. A. Smith Die Design Handbk. (ed. 3) Index 7 A long-stroke reducing press actuated by a rack and pinion.

1688 J. Love Geodæsia ix. 139 This done, lay the Centre of your Reducing-Scale near the Centre of the white Paper, and there with a a Needle through the Centre make it fast.

1701 T. Tuttell Descr. Math. Instruments in J. Moxon Math. made Easie (ed. 3) 17 Reducing Scale,..a thin broad piece of Box with several different Scales of equal Parts, and Lines to turn Chains and Links into Acres and Roods, by Inspection.

1770 W. Emerson Art Surv. 6 As to the reducing scale, it turns on a center pin, nearer one end than the other.

1878 Rep. Secretary War (U.S.) II. iii. App. OO. 1667 (table) Protractors, wooden... Rulers, metallic... Reducing-squares, brass.

a1884 E. H. Knight Pract. Dict. Mech. Suppl. 746/2 Reducing Squares, a mode of making reductions of drawings or designs. The original has lines drawn over it, dividing it off into squares... A piece of paper of the size desired is then divided into a similar number of squares, and the objects contained in the former squares delineated in the smaller ones.

1949 M. Ickis Standard Bk. Quilt Making 201/2 Draft a pattern of a smaller rooster by using reducing squares.

1863 Newton's London Jrnl. Arts & Sci. 18 75 The sliding panel may be arranged so as to operate in conjunction with a loaded disc, or piston, or a ‘reducing valve’,..by means of which the steam is kept at a uniform or nearly uniform pressure.

1927 Harper's Mag. Oct. 637/2 He does not comprehend why pumps, reducing valves, escapes, evaporator coils and generator-engines are so complicated and costly.

1993 R. Rucker et al. Mondo 2000 (U.K. ed.) 202/1 Serotonin may be what Aldous Huxley intuited when he theorized that the brain has a ‘reducing valve’.

1860 C. Sevin in Jrnl. Royal Geogr. Soc. 30 48 Several owners of smelting and reducing works.

1910 Bull. Amer. Geogr. Soc. 42 95 (caption) At this locality very modern reducing works are also located, the ore being shipped by mule cart thirty miles to the railway.

1940 Kingsport (Tennessee) Times 25 Aug. 4/1 The Anaconda company has nine months in which to complete a new $1,500,000 nodulizing plant at the Washoe reducing works.

1741 tr. J. A. Cramer Elements Art of assaying Metals i. 42 Borax..is classed, though improperly, among reducing Bodies [L. Reducentibus], that is, among those which restore Metals, howsoever destroyed, to their metallick Form.

1816 R. Jameson Treat. External Characters Minerals (ed. 2) 288 Reducing Agents... These either abstract oxygen from the mineral, or protect it from the action of that gas.

1836 T. Thomson Outl. Mineral. I. 599 In the reducing flame it [sc. disulphuret of copper] becomes covered with a coat and does not melt.

1875 Proc. Royal Soc. 23 551 The idea suggested itself that they might..be deoxidized in the powerfully reducing atmosphere of the hearth of the furnace.

1916 Science 14 July 57/1 This shows positively that dolomites were laid down under reducing conditions.

1974 G. Savage & H. Newman Illustr. Dict. Ceramics 254 The colouring agent was copper oxide fired in a reducing atmosphere.

1991 Mech Engin. Sept. 67/1 Protection of the boiler tubes from reducing gases is accomplished by studding and refractory-coating all metallic surfaces.

2002 P. Herring Biol. Deep Ocean iii. 68 Local reducing environments in the deep sea within which thiotrophic and/or methanotrophic bacteria flourish.

1816 J. C. Hobhouse Substance Lett. II. 199 It is impossible to say, that the allied sovereigns might not lop off some of the excrescences of France, and lower the temperament of her remaining members, by copious phlebotomy, and reducing diet, and wholesome restraint.

1850 D. McCurdy New Amer. Order Arithmetic 80 When the reducing multiplier is 10, 20, 30, 40, or 60, as it may sometimes be, multiply by the tens' figure only, and divide.

1897 T. C. Allbutt et al. Syst. Med. II. 77 The reducing remedies, ichthyol, resorcin, pyrogallol and chrysarobin, have been strongly recommended by Unna.

1931 T. Dreiser Dawn 348 So mentally cribbed and cabined was he by his religious obsessions that he could not but prove a reducing and irritating element in any family.

1980 J. O'Faolain No Country for Young Men ix. 201 The intrusion! Oh, she knew the girl meant no harm but it was so reducing!

1991 D. Bailey & D. Unruh Great Canad. Murder & Myst. Stories 164 All..seemed to have been written by someone who viewed the world through the reducing end of a peepscope.

1928 Lancet 2 June 1119/1 A short review of the results which can be anticipated from reducing diets is interesting and instructive. Fat can be removed quickly or slowly, in lesser or greater amounts.

2006 Diabetes, Obesity & Metabolism 8 674 They were advised to follow mildly hypocaloric reducing diets.

1870 Lancet 16 July 87/1 The patient..drank the waters, took reducing pills (with an alkaline base, to saponify the fat), and had vapour baths.

1955 W. Gaddis Recognitions ii. vii. 608 I'm taking scads of these marvelous reducing pills that simply take your appetite away.

1998 Public Relations Q. (Nexis) 22 Sept. 47 We've pills that cure and pills that kill, Weight-gaining pills, reducing pills..and still we keep producing pills.

1866 H. E. Roscoe Lessons Elem. Chem. xxxix. 336 In contact with reducing agents, nitro-benzol undergoes the following important reduction to aniline.

1934 C. C. Steele Introd. Plant Biochem. iii. vii. 60 Aldehydes are good reducing agents, since they are easily oxidised to the corresponding acid.

2003 Washington Post (Nexis) 2 Apr. f1 To speed up the development of color, meat processors add a reducing agent such as sodium erythorbate.

1914 Fresno (Calif.) Morning Republican 20 Sept. 21/6 (advt.) When you need a..reducing belt, appendicitis belt or any kind of the latest appliances, go to..the expert truss fitters.

1928 A. Huxley Point Counter Point v. 69 No idea how comfortable those rubber reducing belts are till you've tried them.

1981 Industry Week (Nexis) 24 Aug. 49 Products include drugs, low- and no-calorie foods, and reducing belts.

1857 Message & Rep. to Gen. Assembly & Governor State of Ohio 1856 i. iv. 225 (table) 2 reducing couplings 2 inch.

1873 Rep. Commissioners Great Fire Boston 506 There was a two-inch coupling on the hydrant, while ours were two-and-a-half-inch... We spent some fifteen or twenty minutes in trying to find a reducing coupling.

1978 R. P. Singhal Home Plumber's Bible iv. 103 Reducing Couplings connect pipes of different sizes.

1995 Daily Herald (Chicago) 2 Apr. (Home & Garden) 6/1 Install a T-fitting, a short nipple and a reducing coupling.

1848 Douglas Jerrold's Shilling Mag. 7 237 This work shows in another manner the application of mechanical ingenuity to the purpose of multiplying works of Art, the miniature model having been reduced from the original bust by Cheverton's Reducing Machine.

1869 R. B. Smyth Gold Fields Victoria 611 ‘Flouring’ is the forming of the mercury into small particles by the action of the reducing-machine.

1947 J. C. Rich Materials & Methods Sculpt. vi. 191 The original model is first cast in a hard bronze, and by means of a reducing machine a small steel die is cut of the precise size of the medal. With this die the copies are struck.

2001 D. Hunt Farm Power & Machinery (ed. 10) xii. 188/1 A roller mill is a very simple reducing machine.

1864 F. Edwards Treat. Smoky Chimneys 58 Mr. Billing's reducing piece for the top of a chimney.

1882 Sanitary Rec. 3 370/1 The 12-inch drain was far too large, and had the 9-inch syphon been connected to it by a tapered reducing piece, it would have been more likely to clear.

1901 Feilden's Mag. 4 432/1 There would be a good many special pieces used, such as..12-in. to 9-in. reducing pieces, besides many bends.

1982 R. Hildebrand Basic Plumbing Techniques 27/1 One with a female opening on one end and a male opening at the other is called a reducing piece.

1876 Chem. News 11 Feb. 64/2 (heading) Optical inactivity of the reducing sugar found in commercial products.

1934 S. Jordan Chocolate Eval. xv. 167 Had it [sc. milk] been present, a sizable quantity of reducing sugars would have been found due to the lactose.

1996 H. W. Paul Sci., Vine, & Wine in Mod. France xi. 323 The production of lactic acid by the ‘bad’ bacteria in their attack on the wine's reducing sugars, glycerol, and tartaric acid.

1881 M. N. Forney Car Builder’s Dict. 124/2 Reducing Tee,..a T-shaped cast-iron tube for uniting one pipe at right angles with two others in the same line, and which are not all of the same size.

1883 Trans. Amer. Soc. Mech. Engineers 4 276 A reducing elbow has not the same measurements as a reducing tee of the same general denomination.

1924 B. B. Robb & F. G. Behrends Farm Engin. I. ix. 404 A reducing tee..has one or more of the openings of a smaller size.

1990 D. Holloway Which? Bk. Plumbing & Central Heating (rev. ed.) xiii. 153/1 Run a short stub of pipe into one of the 22mm connections of a reducing tee.

1772 J. M. Adair Comm. Princ. & Pract. Physic 398 In the case of CC, bleeding and the reducing treatment was the most effectual means of restoring salutary determination.

1837 W. Stokes Treat. Diagnosis & Treatm. Dis. Chest i. 115 These symptoms must be met by an omission of all reducing treatment.

1907 F. H. Burnett Shuttle xix. 195 Mina is growing fat, and spends her days in taking reducing treatments.

1999 Skeptical Inquirer (Nexis) 1 May 13 Only recently, I heard about a new reducing treatment given by some doctor in Florida. The urine of a pregnant woman is injected into the obese patient to ‘break down the fat cells’.