0 to make something seem less important or less bad than it really is:
1 to treat something unpleasant as less important, because you want to avoid angering or hurting people:
The movie soft-pedals the more sensational aspects of his life.
They were thus willing to soft-pedal the struggle for equal rights, and thereby avoided the brunt of the ideological incompatibility described above.
If the chair had been a man, you would have a cover-up, complete with back-room deals being cut to soft-pedal on some of the boys.
I categorically reject the assertion that we have asked staff to soft-pedal on illegal immigration to protect the asylum target.
We toyed with fast breeder reactors, but we decided to soft-pedal on that type of reactor.
They are half threatening this country that they are going to soft-pedal the purchase of tractors until we deal with the question of the oil embargo.
In the face of this resistance, it may be tempting to get discouraged, to second-guess the effort, to soft-pedal our message.
So, did, they soft-pedal things in order to grab a wider audience?
Some of them have been soft-pedalled with the passing of the years.
