zmanjevanje

Zmanjevanje is a term used in several South Slavic languages to denote the act or process of reducing, diminishing, or lowering something. The word is formed from a verb meaning to make something smaller or lesser, and it is commonly used in technical and policy contexts as well as everyday speech.

In Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian, Slovenian and related varieties, the concept is expressed with slightly different spellings and grammatical forms, but the core idea remains the same: a deliberate act of decreasing a variable such as consumption, emissions, or costs. The noun zmanjevanje is often contrasted with terms for growth or increase found in the same languages.

Common domains include environmental policy and energy use, where zmanjevanje energy consumption or emissions is a central objective; economics and public administration, referring to reductions in expenditure, demand, or risk; and demography or social policy, where reductions in birth rates or population growth may be discussed.

Variants and related terms include zmanjševanje in some varieties, as well as other Slavic equivalents such as umanjenje or smanjenje in neighboring languages. In English, the concepts are described as reduction or decrease.