make light of

Idioms and Phrases

Also, make little of . Treat as unimportant, as in He made light of his allergies , or She made little of the fact that she'd won . The first term, which uses light in the sense of “trivial,” was first recorded in William Tyndale's 1526 Bible translation (Matthew 22:5), in the parable of the wedding feast, where the invited guests reject the king's invitation: “They made light of it and went their ways.” The variant dates from the early 1800s. For an antonym, see make much of .

Related Words

• curtail
• decrease
• diminish
• downplay
• lessen
• play down
• reduce
• trivialize
• underestimate