reducible

[ri-doo-suh-buhl, -dyoo-]

adjective

1. capable of being reduced.

2. Mathematics.

   1. of or relating to a polynomial that can be factored into the product of polynomials, each of lower degree.

   2. of or relating to a group that can be written as the direct product of two of its subgroups.

   3. of or relating to a set whose set of accumulation points is countable.

Other Word Forms

• reducibility noun
• reducibleness noun
• reducibly adverb
• nonreducibility noun
• nonreducible adjective
• nonreducibly adverb
• unreducible adjective
• unreducibly adverb

Word History and Origins

Origin of reducible¹

late Middle English word dating back to 1400–50; reduce, -ible

Example Sentences

I'd say first and foremost, that mushrooms are reducible to poisons, pizza toppings and party drugs.

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An understanding that our most consequential actions are largely overdetermined, meaning not reducible to a single motivation.

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He spoke of humans as reducible to code, arguing that the future will be less about human or civil rights than about “evolution rights.”

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He praised the way Bergman’s contemporary “Hamlet” wasn’t “reducible to concept or shock” but allowed the play to emerge “like a painting scrubbed back to its original colors.”

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As Indigenous people have always known, consciousness is not reducible to mathematical calculations, it's embodied, interconnected and inseparable from the matter that is life.

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