Word.ws English Dictionary

diminishing returns

diminishing returns noun: a condition in which additional inputs into an organization, project or process produce progressively fewer or lower-quality additional outputs, and may, in extreme cases, cause the total quantity or quality of outputs to decrease.

Noun

diminishing returns pl (plural only)

  1. (idiomatic, plural, plural-only) A condition in which additional inputs into an organization, project or process produce progressively fewer or lower-quality additional outputs, and may, in extreme cases, cause the total quantity or quality of outputs to decrease.
    • Brüno was a case of diminishing returns, intermittently amusing but not nearly as bracing or funny as Borat—it didn’t help that Brüno was the most thinly conceived of all his Da Ali G Show characters—and the lead-up to Baron Cohen’s new comedy, The Dictator, made it look like he’d boxed himself...2012 May 15, Scott Tobias, “Film: Reviews: The Dictator”, in The Onion AV Club
    • He added, however, that the system operator is unlikely to use the cellphone alert often, lest Californians start to ignore it. The governor agreed that diminishing returns were a risk.2022 September 7, Jill Cowan, Shawn Hubler, Ivan Penn, “California Leaders Credit Cellphone Alert for Sudden Conservation”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

diminishing returns meaning in Tamil

diminishing returns in Tamil

குறைந்துவரும் வருவாய்

Questions about diminishing returns

What does diminishing returns mean?
Diminishing returns means a condition in which additional inputs into an organization, project or process produce progressively fewer or lower-quality additional outputs, and may, in extreme cases, cause the total quantity or quality of outputs to decrease.
What is diminishing returns in Tamil?
Diminishing returns in Tamil is குறைந்துவரும் வருவாய். See Diminishing returns meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is diminishing returns?
Diminishing returns is a noun.

Words near diminishing returns in the dictionary

  1. diminisher
  2. diminishers
  3. diminishes
  4. diminisheth
  5. diminishing
  6. diminishing returns
  7. diminishingly
  8. diminishings
  9. diminishment
  10. diminishments
  11. diminisht

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: diminishing returns (page history and authors); diminishing returns (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-diminishing returns.ogg.

Cite this entry: “diminishing returns.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/diminishing_returns. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.