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Synonyms

downscale

American  
[doun-skeyl] / ˈdaʊnˌskeɪl /

adjective

  1. located at, moving toward, or of or for the middle or lower end of a social or economic scale.

    The discount store caters mainly to downscale customers.

  2. plain, practical, or inexpensive; not luxurious.

    downscale clothing.


verb (used with object)

downscaled, downscaling
  1. downsize.

  2. to make less luxurious or expensive.

downscale British  

adjective

  1. of or for the lower end of an economic or social scale; down-market

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

verb

  1. (tr) to reduce the scale of

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of downscale

down 1 + scale 3

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

The Atlantic describes the Brightline train as a luxurious ride for high rollers but paints a downscale cast to those who are run over by it.

From The Wall Street Journal Dec. 5, 2025

“We had to actually downscale to shooting on a Blackmagic, just a little tiny camera, because we didn’t have money for so many years to keep it going.”

From Los Angeles Times Jan. 7, 2025

Midjourney, the one Jason Allen used, has a feature that allows you to upscale and downscale images.

From Slate Sep. 12, 2022

But downscale customers also spend money on movies and streaming services.

From Washington Post May 20, 2022

Her voice was the downscale wail of an oboe.

From Just Around the Corner Romance en casserole by Hurst, Fannie

The shrinking of device dimensionality, together with the downscaled junction region, render the device fast and energy efficient, resulting in high-performance digital and analog circuits.

From Science Daily Feb. 23, 2024

If the media company is going away — if it’s being downscaled to a production unit — there’s no need for a network president.

From Seattle Times Jan. 26, 2023

Because of this, they've downscaled their expectations of what politics can do.

From Salon Oct. 20, 2022

I’ve streamlined the recipe using a food processor and downscaled it with chicken.

From New York Times May 2, 2022

Magic Leap raised billions of dollars as a consumer headset company, but the company downscaled its plans rapidly — and replaced its previous CEO Rony Abovitz with Johnson — in 2020 amid significant layoffs.

From The Verge Jan. 12, 2022

Why waste the money to only end up downscaling all of the extra work and not release the series in the Blu-ray format?

From Washington Times Nov. 25, 2022

It is actually where DeSo and Boeing take their simulations and interconnect them, with Nvidia’s machine learning upscaling, downscaling, translating, and then operating that simulation.

From The Verge Jul. 19, 2022

She had tried everything to keep Tilth operating — selling granola, offering online classes with ingredient kits, running wine specials and downscaling the menu to feature comfort food like mac and cheese.

From Seattle Times Mar. 14, 2021

And last month, officials announced that they were downscaling from the arena to a much smaller convention center nearby.

From Fox News Jul. 17, 2020

To solve this problem, the modelers used a process called downscaling to develop results with much higher spatial resolution — in this case, to grid cells that measured about six kilometers on a side.

From Salon Aug. 10, 2019

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