Word for lesser importance

Trivializing or trivialization doesn’t explicitly describe the act, but it describes the effect you’re talking about.

This is in conjunction with WS2’s answer: you reduce (or maybe minimize, as per Centaurus) the story to the point where it is trivial.

answered Feb 22, 2015 at 16:12

What you are talking about here is reduction, as expressed in reductionism or reductionist.

Reduction is a perfectly valid process, not only in mathematics — reducing a mathematical argument to its simplest form — but in things such as philosophy etc.

But the examples you give are of things, which I would assert are perversely reductionist.

The Oxford Dictionary Online does note that it is often DEROGATORY. Hence it may be possible to leave out the perversely, above, and sufficient to say the arguments are reductionist.

answered Feb 22, 2015 at 14:18

The rhetorical device known as bathos is defined as

an abrupt transition in style from the exalted to the commonplace,
producing a ludicrous effect.

[Wikipedia]

answered Feb 22, 2015 at 15:14

minimize — to treat or describe (something) as smaller or less important than it is Merriam-Webster

• «I don’t mean to minimize his contributions, on the contrary.»
• «During the interview, he tried to minimize his flaws.»

minimize — «to represent as having the least degree of importance, value, or size: minimized the magnitude of the crisis.» TFD

answered Feb 22, 2015 at 14:09

How about ‘cut down’ ?

As in «he cut her speech down to a simplified version of several complex points»

Although this can have a wider meaning. But the words have both a specific meaning and a general hint of the negative aspects of reduction
as in ‘cut it out’ or ‘cut from the team’
and down as in lower or lesser in both senses.

Or else the more colloquial expression «dumbing down».

Although dumbing down does not always mean a shorter version , just one that is more accessible to a wider range of people including those without much intelligence!

answered Feb 22, 2015 at 17:20

answered Feb 23, 2015 at 20:17

• to give short shrift

Per Wiktionary:

A quick rejection, especially one which is impolite and undertaken without proper consideration.

In fact, I actually like the definition that Google puts at the top of the search page for the phrase even better:

rapid and unsympathetic dismissal; curt treatment.

Merriam-Webster and OED, however, favor the older definition from which this meaning is derived:

a brief space of time allowed for a criminal to make his confession before execution

^(OED)

1 : barely adequate time for confession before execution

^{(Merriam-Webster)}

answered Feb 23, 2015 at 20:35

Underplay could work.
One could also use truncate but it should be accompanied by an adjective such as

a blunt truncation

or

a dismissive truncation

answered Feb 23, 2015 at 0:56

MazuraMazura

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answered Feb 22, 2015 at 23:40