soft-pedal

soft-ped·al (sôftpdl, sft-)

tr.v. soft-ped·aled or soft-ped·alled, soft-ped·al·ing or soft-ped·al·ling, soft-ped·als

1. Music To soften or mute the tone of by depressing the soft pedal.

2. Informal To make less emphatic or obvious; play down: soft-pedal a potentially explosive issue.

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soft-pedal

vb -als, -alling, -alled US, -als -aling, -aled (tr)

1. (Music, other) to mute the tone of (a piano) by depressing the soft pedal

2. Informal to make (something, esp something unpleasant) less obvious by deliberately failing to emphasize or allude to it

n soft pedal

(Music / Instruments) a foot-operated lever on a piano, the left one of two, that either moves the whole action closer to the strings so that the hammers strike with less force or causes fewer of the strings to sound Compare sustaining pedal See piano¹

Thesaurus

Verb

1.

soft-pedal - play down or obscure; "His advisers soft-pedaled the president's blunder" background, play down, downplay - understate the importance or quality of; "he played down his royal ancestry"

Translations

soft-pedal [ˈsɒftˈpedl] VT (esp US) (fig) → minimizar la importancia de

soft-pedal [ˌsɒftˈpɛdl] vt (fig) → minimizzare