Words / D / Medicine

downplay

verb/ˈdaʊnpleɪ/

B2CEFR level
35/100Rarity: fairly common
TechnicalRegister

To make something seem less important or severe than it actually is.

Patients sometimes downplay chest pain to avoid a hospital admission.

Similar: minimise, underplay

Topic: Clinical consultation in Medical English

Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.

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More medicine words: Clinical consultation