flatten

James C. Scott called this legibility, the way institutions flatten complicated people into categories they can manage.

From Slate ● Aug. 21, 2026

The researchers found that rift flanks begin to flatten relatively quickly once tectonic movement ends.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 25, 2026

River can be a good thing, social media algorithms can flatten the context around the waterway, particularly when it comes to demographic changes in nearby neighborhoods.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 13, 2026

As demand for artificial intelligence skyrockets, AI companies have been grasping for solutions to flatten the steep cost curve of compute.

From MarketWatch ● Apr. 18, 2026

They were too happy, precariously so, and she wanted to guard that bond; she feared that marriage would flatten it to a prosaic partnership.

From "Half of a Yellow Sun" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

A hot-strip mill flattens thick slabs of heated steel into long, thin ribbons of sheet steel that are wound into coils and shipped to customers.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 8, 2026

Like VIX, it is not as bullish as it could be: The term structure of the VIX futures rises in the front end of the curve but then flattens out.

From MarketWatch ● May 8, 2026

Sometimes it flattens the experience into palatable passive consumption.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 26, 2026

But this approach effectively flattens the data - anything above 500 is treated the same on official monitors, even if the real concentration is far higher.

From BBC ● Nov. 15, 2025

Before I can say anything, William stands up, takes his hat off and flattens down his hair.

From "Code Name Kingfisher" by Liz Kessler

So I sliced the kielbasa into coins, cut up one red pepper and one medium onion, tucked the whole thing into a reusable freezer bag and flattened it out.

From Salon ● Aug. 25, 2026

Water vole volunteers 'get very excited by flattened poo'

From BBC ● Aug. 14, 2026

If you haven’t been following the controversy, Wilson felt that Nolan had flattened the saga by mostly erasing the Greek gods and Odysseus’ wit, lust and thorny contradictions.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 4, 2026

So do the animal-shaped wool carpets that riff on traditional skin rugs by using vegetarian-friendly materials to create colorful, flattened creatures: a fiery, spotted cheetah; a purple-striped dodo; a particularly silly mammoth.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 24, 2026

They flattened themselves on the platform and endured the deafening sound.

From "The Door in the Wall" by Marguerite de Angeli

However, the yield curve began rolling over in April 2025 and has been flattening again since year-end.

From Barron's ● Jun. 26, 2026

At this stage, the flattening appears to reflect a market that believes policy is not restrictive enough to bring inflation back to target, rather than a market focused primarily on slowing growth.

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 24, 2026

Critics of the change say this risks flattening meaningful distinctions between religious identities, particularly for service members whose beliefs do not fall neatly into major denominational groupings.

From Salon ● Jun. 6, 2026

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy instructed senior leadership teams to increase the ratio of staff to managers by at least 15%, flattening organizational layers.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 5, 2026

Suddenly ordinary people could get the benefit of computing without being programmers. ft is impossible to exaggerate how important this was to the flattening of the world.

From "The World Is Flat" by Thomas L. Friedman