Downplay
Today we’re going to talk about, not an expression, but just a word: downplay. It’s a verb, an action. When you downplay something, you describe something as less than it would normally seem, or you describe it as less than it really is. Think of “downplay” as the opposite of the word, “exaggerate.”
We use downplay with a certain type of word. Let me give you some examples of words that go well with “downplay.” You can downplay risks: that’s probably the most common. You can downplay danger; you can downplay costs; you can downplay importance, seriousness, things like that. Let’s look at some examples with these words.
Brazil’s president downplayed the risks of the virus. When he was talking about the virus in public, he made the risk of the virus seem less than it truly was. Many people think that energy companies are downplaying the risk of climate change. Companies that invest in big projects during good economic times often downplay the risk of recession. They’d rather just think of the good times.
You can downplay the seriousness of something. When the coronavirus first emerged, many Western governments downplayed the seriousness of the coronavirus. It was just another virus to emerge from Asia, they said. It’s not that serious. To this day, some people think China itself downplayed the seriousness of the virus because they didn’t want to be embarrassed on the world stage.
The important thing with “downplay”, though, is that you purposely, purposely, describe something as smaller or less than it really is. Just being wrong doesn’t mean you’re downplaying something. For example, may people didn’t think face masks were effective against the spread of the coronavirus. If you said that face masks were not an effective tool to stop the spread of the virus, you might have just been wrong. If you were wrong, you weren’t downplaying it. To downplay something is to purposely make it seem less important or less big than it is.
India and China recently had a skirmish at their border. A skirmish is like a small conflict. In this case, a number of Indian soldiers died. China downplayed the importance of the conflict. India was offended by actions of Chinese soldiers, but China chose to present this as no big deal.
Some people are not comfortable purposely talking about their own strengths and successes. Some people—this is true—downplay their own accomplishments, even in job interviews They don’t want to appear to be bragging, so they do the opposite. They are falsely modest. That’s fine in a conversation, but if you go into a job interview and everyone else is exaggerating their accomplishments, you don’t want to be the only one to downplay yours. You don’t want to be the only one to purposely talk too little about your accomplishments and your strengths.
Quote of the Week
Today’s quote of the week is by the Irish writer Laurence Stern. He said, “We don’t love people so much for the good they have done us, as for the good we have done them.” That’s a good quote—especially if you have kids. One more time: “We don’t love people so much for the good they have done us, as for the good we have done them,” says the Irish writer Laurence Stern.
See you next time!
That’s all today. Congratulations on making it to the end of today’s lesson. I hope you are staying safe wherever you are. If you’re in Europe, now is not the time to become complacent. Just be careful out there, that’s my final word for the day.
And remember, we are doing a webinar on the best technology tools for learning English in 2020. That is this week, today, Wednesday, and Saturday. Check out the home page, PlainEnglish.com, for the full schedule. And if you’re listening after the week of July 13, then don’t worry! You can see a replay. Just go to the webinar section of the home page and you can always see the replays we have available.
We’ll be back, as always, with another lesson on Thursday.
Use realistic expressions like a native speaker
