dephrase

Dephrase is a term used in linguistics and natural language processing to denote the process of removing non-essential phrases from a sentence in order to produce a concise core statement. It is often described as the stripping of qualifiers, parentheticals, and rhetorical flourishes while preserving essential meaning and syntactic structure. The concept sits near practices like editing for clarity and focus, and is sometimes discussed in the context of text normalization and paraphrase tools.

The word blends de- (remove) with phrase. It is not yet a formal term with universal definition, and its usage varies. You will find it in writing tool documentation, blog posts, and some NLP research as a way to describe simplification or tightening of phrasing, rather than as a rigorously defined linguistic category.

In practice, dephrase involves steps such as identifying non-essential modifiers, appositive material, and hedges; prioritizing the main verb and its arguments; and producing a shorter, grammatically correct sentence. In computational settings, rules or models may decide which elements are optional, balancing brevity with grammatical integrity.

Limitations include potential loss of nuance, tone, or authorial voice, and the risk of misrepresenting intent if qualifiers carry crucial meaning. Dephrasing is best used for readability, drafting, or preprocessing content for summarization, with human review when precision matters.

See also: paraphrase, summarization, text simplification.