the.com/reduction
taking too much and boiling it down until only the truth remains
means The act of making something smaller, fewer, or less — in amount, size, or complexity; in cooking, the process of simmering a liquid down until it thickens and intensifies.
from From Latin reducere, "to lead back" — from re- ("back") plus ducere ("to lead," the same root that gives us conduct, duke, and aqueduct). The earliest English sense was literally about leading or bringing something back to a former state; only later did it slide toward the modern meaning of cutting down and boiling away, until the word itself became a kind of reduction of its older self.
- chemistry
- gaining electrons, the opposite of oxidation
- cooking
- simmered sauces lose water, concentrate flavor brutally
- math
- proving a problem as hard as another known problem
- origin
- Latin reducere, to lead back
- art
- linocut printers carve away the block forever between colors
haber-bosch process — industrial nitrogen fixation that produces ~50% of world's protein fertilizer
blast furnace iron smelting — reduces iron ore with carbon monoxide to produce 1.9 billion tons annually
reverse osmosis desalination — reduces salt content in seawater, supplying 300+ million people with fresh water