make light of

Idioms  

1. Also, make little of. Treat as unimportant, as in He made light of his allergies, or She made little of the fact that she'd won. The first term, which uses light in the sense of “trivial,” was first recorded in William Tyndale's 1526 Bible translation (Matthew 22:5), in the parable of the wedding feast, where the invited guests reject the king's invitation: “They made light of it and went their ways.” The variant dates from the early 1800s. For an antonym, see make much of.

---

Example Sentences

Mr. Hegseth has tried to make light of this incident, posting a meme of a turtle from a children’s book firing a weapon at a vessel.

From The Wall Street Journal

“Don’t make light of your suffering, dear.”

From Literature

"In the immediacy of the moment it would have been easy to make light of what was happening before the full picture was clear," it said in a message to fans on X.

From BBC

On Tuesday, Kimmel teared up when he spoke of Kirk’s death and said he never meant to make light of a young man’s killing.

From Los Angeles Times

During Tuesday's show, a tearful Kimmel said it "was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man".

From BBC

Related Words

• curtail
• decrease
• diminish
• downplay
• lessen
• play down
• reduce
• trivialize
• underestimate