Word: downplaying
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...with a passion (perhaps a bit cerebral by Romantic standards, but potent passion nevertheless) that stemmed from his religious frustration as a staunch Roman Catholic in Anglican England. Similarly, though Bach was "only" a Lutheran, his music resonates with passion that many of his interpreters and biographers sought to downplay or even negate, thinking it incongruous with the strict Baroque compositional forms...
Astronomers couldn't agree, though, on how big the pieces were, and thus how explosive the impacts would actually be. Just hours before the pictures came down, Levy had tried to downplay expectations. "Even if we see nothing spectacular," he argued, "this is still a scientifically important event." But when Hammel had brought the word -- and the champagne -- Levy and the Shoemakers could barely contain themselves. Said a beaming Eugene Shoemaker: "This is just the best possible news. And remember, this isn't even the biggest piece...
...consider the matter of wife battery. We managed to dodge it in the Bobbitt case and downplay it as a force in Tonya Harding's life. Thanks to O.J., though, we're caught up now in a mass consciousness-raisi ng session, grimly absorbing the fact that in some areas domestic violence sends as many women to emergency rooms as any other form of illness, injury or assault...
...President and his advisers tried to downplay the blow. While "sharply disappointed," his aides said, Clinton was not angry. Other Caribbean countries, they promised, would be found to replace Panama; Grenada, for instance, had agreed "in principle" to provide a haven for at least some of the refugees. But the sudden change of heart by Panama only deepened the impression that the Administration was practicing a kind of voodoo diplomacy toward Haiti, lurching from headline to headline and hoping that somehow the country's leaders would magically change their ways or disappear...
...opinion masquerading as fact. Some people, both white and black, said that crediting white pressure for the denunciations of Farrakhan was condescending, that it deprived black leaders of credit for what was simply principled behavior. Some readers also felt that to concentrate on this issue was to minimize or downplay the virulence of Muhammad's speech. And there was a general view among our critics that no amount of good works by the Nation of Islam could justify any black leader's toleration of, not to mention alliance with, such a racist organization...