How to Use soft-pedal in a Sentence

soft-pedal

verb
  • Old school with a gift for storytelling, Simon was not one to soft-pedal his mentees.
    — Dana O’Neil, CNN Money, 9 May 2026
  • Heringer believes the city soft-pedals crime, pointing to metrics that show improvement but not where pockets of violent crime persist.
    — Patricia Gallagher Newberry, Cincinnati Enquirer, 2 Sep. 2025
  • Questlove is too much of a humanist to soft-pedal’s Maurice White’s contradictions.
    — Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 4 June 2026
  • Its screenplay, which Dolan hatched in collaboration with three others, tries to soft-pedal predictable beats that nonetheless end up the only ones getting beaten.
    — Dennis Harvey, Variety, 5 Aug. 2026
  • That’s not because Crystal soft-pedals the emotional horror of returning to the charred remains of your home after watching, helpless, as flames took the locus of all your best memories.
    — Chris Jones, New York Daily News, 21 Oct. 2026
  • That’s not because Crystal soft-pedals the emotional horror of returning to your home to find charred remains after watching, helpless, as flames took the locus of all your best memories.
    — Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune, 22 Oct. 2026
  • This loud-and-proud version of Sonny certainly feels progressive, but in a different way it soft-pedals Sonny’s complications.
    — Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 31 Mar. 2026
  • Nothing grates quite like those slick pharmaceutical ads blaring across the TV, promising quick fixes while soft-pedaling potential side effects.
    — Alex Ward, Boston Herald, 15 Aug. 2025
  • But Paddy’s isn’t Sudz, and the Gang’s efforts to soft-pedal their antics to be more in line with those mainstream bars devolved into typical Sunny-style hostility and off-putting grossness.
    — Dennis Perkins, Entertainment Weekly, 28 July 2026
  • In fact, several of the investigators believed the shooting was intentional, and that the Biden administration had actually soft-pedaled the investigation’s findings to appease Israel.
    — Scott Griffen, MSNBC Newsweek, 4 Nov. 2025
  • Whatever your preconceived notions about Feldman are, Hume’s film will expand and challenge them; the movie’s greatness lies in its ability to capture all of Feldman’s contradictions and self-destructiveness, empathizing with him without soft-pedaling his sins.
    — Jim Hemphill, IndieWire, 23 Jan. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'soft-pedal.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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