minify

English

Etymology

mini- +‎ -fy

Verb

minify (third-person singular simple present minifies, present participle minifying, simple past and past participle minified)

1. To make smaller.
   • 1887, Philip Schaff, “Bibliography: Modern Works”, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 4: Augustine: The Writings Against the Manichaeans and Against the Donatists:

     Schneckenburger strives to make it appear that Baur unduly minifies the Christian element in Manichæism.

   • 1942, Lloyd C. Douglas, “Green Light”, in Inc., Pocket Books, page 170:

     There must be something in the appeal of the Gothic that minifies one group of values leaving other considerations untouched, or actually magnifying them.

2. To reduce in apparent size, as for example objects viewed through a lens or mirror shaped so as to increase the field of view, such as a convex or aspheric mirror or a Fresnel lens.
   • 1935, Lloyd C. Douglas, chapter 10, in Green Light, Houghton Mifflin:

     But, mused Parker, this theory of one's perplexities being diminished by the vastly superior height of these Gothic arches cannot have any foundation in fact, for the same inverted telescope that minifies my burdens also minifies my capacity to carry them, leaving me exactly of the same stature as before.

3. (computing) To remove white space and unnecessary characters from a web page's source code in order to reduce its size and improve download time.

   Synonym: uglify

   Antonyms: pretty-print, beautify, prettify

   • 2008, Steve Souders, High Performance Web Sites: Essential Knowledge for Front-End Engineers,, O'Reilly, page 69:

     When code is minified, all comments are removed, as well as unneeded whitespace characters (space, newline, and tab).

Synonyms

• (make smaller): minimize

Antonyms

• (antonym(s) of “make smaller”): magnify
• (antonym(s) of “reduce in apparent size”): magnify

Related terms

• minification (noun form)

Translations