What does 'bring down' mean in a tech meeting?

'Bring down' means to reduce or decrease something. In tech, teams often use 'bring down' when talking about reducing costs, loading times, error rates, or resource usage.

Can I use 'bring down' in formal documentation?

Yes, 'bring down' is neutral and works in both spoken and written English. For very formal reports, you might prefer 'reduce' or 'decrease', but 'bring down' is perfectly acceptable.

What is the difference between 'bring down' and 'reduce'?

'Bring down' and 'reduce' mean the same thing. 'Reduce' is slightly more formal. 'Bring down' is more conversational and common in standups and Slack messages.

Where does the pronoun go with 'bring down'?

The pronoun goes between 'bring' and 'down'. Say 'bring it down', not 'bring down it'. For nouns, both work: 'bring down costs' or 'bring costs down'.

Is 'bring down' the same as 'take down'?

No. 'Bring down' means reduce. 'Take down' usually means to remove something or shut down a server/service. Be careful not to confuse them.

Can 'bring down' mean something negative?

In some contexts, 'bring down' can mean to cause failure (like 'the bug brought down the server'). Context will make the meaning clear. In planning discussions, it usually means 'reduce'.

Bring Down Meaning, Examples & Quiz for Engineers

Commonness
Versatility
Formality	CasualFormalNeutral
Spoken ↔ Written	SpokenWrittenBoth
Directness ↔ Diplomatic	DirectDiplomaticNeutral
Region

Say it like this

✓We need to bring down the latency before launch.

✓How can we bring down the infrastructure costs this quarter?

✓The goal is to bring down the error rate to under 1%.

✓Let's see if we can bring down the build time.

✓We managed to bring down the response time by 40%.

Real examples

Standup

"I'm working on optimizations to bring down the page load time."

Slack message

"Any ideas on how to bring down our AWS bill this month?"

GitHub PR

"This refactor should bring down memory usage significantly."

Jira ticket

"Goal: Bring down API response time from 500ms to under 200ms."

Retrospective

"We successfully brought down the bug count by 30% this sprint."

Sprint planning

"This sprint, let's focus on bringing down the deployment failures."

Pair programming

"If we cache this query, we can bring down the database load."

Don't say this

Handle with care. Be careful: "bring down" can also mean "cause to fail" (e.g., "The deploy brought down the server"), so context matters.

✕We want to bring down the quality of our code.

✓We want to bring up the quality of our code.— 'Bring down' means reduce. For quality, you want 'bring up' (increase) or 'improve'.

✕The new feature will bring down next week.

✓The new feature will launch next week.— 'Bring down' needs an object—what are you reducing? It doesn't mean 'release' or 'launch'.

✕We need to bring down it.

✓We need to bring it down.— With phrasal verbs, pronouns go between the verb and particle: 'bring it down', not 'bring down it'.

Other forms

base form

bring down

"We need to bring down costs."

third person

brings down

"This change brings down latency."

past tense

brought down

"We brought down the error rate last sprint."

present participle

bringing down

"We're bringing down the response time."

past participle

brought down

"The costs have been brought down."

Often used with

bring down costsVery common in budget discussions

bring down latencyUsed when improving API or page speed

bring down the error rateCommon in quality discussions

bring down the loadRefers to server or system load

bring down response timePerformance optimization context

Similar words

reduceMore formal, works in any context

lowerSimple and direct, very common

cutMore aggressive—often used with costs or time

decreaseFormal, good for reports and documentation

minimizeEmphasizes making something as small as possible

Opposites

bring upincreaseraiseboostgrow

Practice

Try it

4 quick exercises

Choose the most natural sentence

1. Which sentence sounds most natural?

We need to bring down the costs.We need to bring down it costs.We need to bring costs down it.

Spot the mistake

2. Find the error: 'The team brought down the new feature yesterday.'

'brought down' should be 'launched' or 'released''the team' should be 'we'No mistake

Fill in the blank

3. We managed to bring ____ the response time by optimizing the database queries.

Rewrite this sentence

4. Rewrite using 'bring down': 'We want to reduce the API latency.'

More words

cut down reduce optimize scale down trim bring up ramp down

Questions

Quick poll

Have you said "bring down" in a standup this week?

Want more structured practice like this? Our English for Programmers course covers real workplace English in depth.

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