relieve/reduce my anxiety

AngliholicBefore I stepped onto the stage for tonight's performance, I tried to relieve/reduce my anxiety by breathing deeply a few times

Do both of the words in bold fit in the above and mean about the same? Thanks.

They mean the same to me.

Hoa Thai

Angliholic
Before I stepped onto the stage for tonight's performance, I tried to relieve/reduce my anxiety by breathing deeply a few times

Do both of the words in bold fit in the above and mean about the same? Thanks.

They mean the same to me.

Thanks, HT.

Not the same.

Relieve also has the meaning of freeing of, delivering from, which the other doesn't.

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English defines:

relieve: to reduce someone's pain or unpleasant feelings. In my opinion, in the context of reducing anxiety, relieve and reduce would serve the sentence well.

(Deleted-- rude remark. MM)

Marius HancuComing up with poor dictionary definitions, for elementary school students, aren't we? If you want to reduce the discussion to that level be my guest, it's your loss of understanding.

Hi Marius,

Often words by themselves would not form clear ideas unless they take part in concert with others. For each idea, they deliver what fits be

At first, "relieve anxiety" does not sound natural to me. However, I got this example from Collins Cobuild

Helps relieve anxiety and muscular tension.

There are also numerous examples on "relieve stress", "relieve tension", "relieve pressure", "relieve boredom", etc.

I got 515,000 hits from Google searching for "relieve anxiety". It is a very common usage af

Of course, "relieve the anxiety" can work.

My point is that it doesn't mean quite the same as "reduce the anxiety."

Read my posting in the above.

Here is my two cents:
In the given context, I think relieve and reduce would be fairly similar.
Relieve is also used quite regularly to mean eliminate -- which might be looked at as reduce to zero.
Of course, there are further meanings for the word relieve, one of which is urinate. But the context here does not support that particula

YankeeHere is my two cents:
In the given context, I think relieve and reduce would be fairly similar.
Relieve is also used quite regularly to mean eliminate -- which might be looked at as reduce to zero.
Of course, there are further meanings for the word relieve, one of which is urinate. But the context here