play down | Idiomator

Meaning: (idiomatic,transitive)To make or attempt to make something seem lessimportant,likely, orobvious.The essay attempts toplay downthe role slavery had in the Civil War.The senatorplayed downthe threat of a recession.During the wave of anti-immigrant sentiment, Miguelplayed downhis immigrant status by removing Chicano patois from his speech and adopting the nickname "Mike."2019October, Dan Harvey, “HS2 costs rise as schedule slips”, inModern Railways, page 8:Reports that the project is in trouble have been circulating for many months and have beenplayed downby officials.

Examples:

EN: I wouldn't play down the hero part so much.
ES: -Pero no soy un héroe.
EN: I don't want to play down my faults, but I had been really angry when you ran away
ES: No quiero parecer mejor de lo que soy, pero me enfadé mucho cuando te escapaste.
EN: So with the help of this gang of parasites, I convinced myself that the way to be elected was to play down to your lowest common denominator instead of up to your highest.
ES: Así con la ayuda de esta banda de parásitos, me convencí que la manera de ser elegido era jugar bajo al común denominador más bajo en lugar del más alto.
EN: If you've got heart, you can play down the voice.
ES: Si cantas con sentimiento, la voz no importa.
EN: And if you've got voice, you can play down the heart.
ES: Y si tienes buena voz, el sentimiento da igual.
EN: There's been gun-play down at the docks.
ES: Hubo un tiroteo en el puerto.
EN: Leblanc...but they don't forget me... any more than the others who used to play down there.
ES: al igual que los otros que solían jugar en este patio.
EN: Why don't you play down here for a while?
ES: ¿Por qué no juegas un rato aquí abajo?
EN: Look, play down that talk about fighting, will you?
ES: No des importancia a esa historia de la lucha,? Vale?
EN: - I don't want you to play down there.
ES: No quiero que juegues allí.
EN: I used to play down there when I was a kid.
ES: Solía jugar allí cuando era un chiquillo.
EN: You ever play down Miami?
ES: ¿Has jugado en Miami?
EN: Why play down to the audience?
ES: ¿Por qué jugar bajo con el espectador?
EN: Pretty funny games they play down there, huh?
ES: Bonitos juegos los de allá abajo, ¿eh?
EN: I keep trying to play down my high cheekbones and that character wants to me look like a sick Indian.
ES: Sigo intentando restarle importancia a mis pómulos. y ese personaje quiere que parezca un indio enfermo.

Note: the examples for non latin scripts have a high likelihood of mistakes, we do not own any of this data and it is sourced from Wiktionary, the NLLB database and Opensubtitles. Please help us improve this by contributing correct examples. We will be working to fix this issue over time however it is a bigger issue due to the the difficulties in dealing with non latin scripts and grammatical structures(non-romantic/european languages have lower resources as well ).