watered-down

watered-down

1. Literally, of a drink or solution that has been diluted with water. To reduce my daughter's sugar intake, I give her watered-down juice. That cleaner has such a strong smell that I can only use a watered-down version of it.
2. Inferior. That movie was terrible—it's basically just a watered-down version of "The Godfather."
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • literally
  • groghound
  • average Joe
  • gunk
  • be at peace
  • go down a treat
  • be at peace with the world
  • groggy
  • bargain on
  • bargain on (something)
References in periodicals archive
If your topcoat's white, it's best to use watered-down white emulsion for the mist coat, or you may end up doing more coats of topcoat than you need to.
Do we have our priorities right?" After visiting a number of classrooms in which the students could not answer clearly and coherently when asked what the Ten Commandments are, he concluded that "the watered down teaching of the faith has given us a watered-down faith."
The Senate refused to consider the bill and has instead put forth a watered-down version that emphasized tax breaks to spur charitable giving.
Nicola then relates the dramatic events of the next ten years of their lives: wars with the Huguenots, the death of King Francis, Mary's decision to go to Scotland to claim her throne there, Mary's second and third marriages, the endless scrambling for power among the Scottish noblemen, alliances with English noblemen, Mary's imprisonment in Scotland and her decision to seek refuge with her cousin Elizabeth, Queen of England--the readers are expected to follow this convoluted history; they are not given a watered-down version, and the authors are to be congratulated for having such faith in their readers.
* The first United Nations conference to curtail the billion-dollar-a-year illegal trafficking of small arms concluded July 21, 2001, with 189 nations agreeing to the watered-down version the Bush administration had been pressing for.
The corps skipped through a limited vocabulary of watered-down folk and Spanish forms in uncharacteristically predictable spatial patterns.
Last year, Byron Kim painted the walls of the museum's Philip Morris satellite with watered-down grime, and now Vik Muniz will be offering photographs of drawings made from motes gathered at the main branch.
The watered-down no-fault laws the trial lawyers gave us break down into two categories.
Bangsamoro Transition Commission chair Ghadzali Jaafar has maintained that the draft Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) now being finalized by Congress is not 'watered-down,' even as President Duterte himself had to break the impasse over one of the bill's most contentious provisions.
Watered-down laws to reign in boardroom excesses fall short of the Prime Minister's pledges to put workers on boards and give shareholders more power to block multimillion-pound pay packages.
Speaking after case, Mr Smyth said he was out of the country when the watered-down vodka was on sale.
In the face of all these proposed changes, President Aquino said in an interview over Bombo Radyo that he would not accept a watered-down Bangsamoro law.
If your topcoat is white, use watered-down white emulsion for sealing, or you'll end up doing more coats of topcoat than you need to.
In recent decades, however, the oath has been largely abandoned in favor of watered-down alternative vows (or none at all), due in part to the original Hippocratic proviso: "I will not give to a woman an instrument to produce abortion." The pernicious trend has bolstered the transformation of abortion from an evil that physicians should shun into an increasingly accepted aspect of medical care.
Even supporters of the initiative acknowledge that they'd prefer a watered-down bill to no bill at all.