Word.ws English Dictionary

give-and-take

give-and-take noun: the settling of differences through compromise and mutual concessions.

Noun

give-and-take (uncountable)

  1. The settling of differences through compromise and mutual concessions.
  2. A lively exchange of conversation.
    • We believe that it is in this spoken world, where people engage in phatic communion and indulge in the give-and-take of interpersonal socialising and the negotiation of personality, identity, friendship and connection, largely unmindful of institutional goals or language policies and politics, that...2019, Li Huang, James Lambert, “Another Arrow for the Quiver: A New Methodology for Multilingual Researchers”, in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, →DOI, page 8

Adjective

give-and-take (comparative more give-and-take, superlative most give-and-take)

  1. Transactional; concerning or requiring both concession and apprehension, not given or received without proportional or relative repercussion.

Forms of give-and-take

Noun
alternative formgive and take
Adjective
comparativemore give-and-take
superlativemost give-and-take

Questions about give-and-take

What does give-and-take mean?
Give-and-take means the settling of differences through compromise and mutual concessions.
What part of speech is give-and-take?
Give-and-take can be a noun or an adjective.

Words near give-and-take in the dictionary

  1. give with one hand and take away with the other
  2. give your head a wobble
  3. give zero fucks
  4. give-and-go
  5. give-and-gos
  6. give-and-take
  7. give-away
  8. give-away shop
  9. give-away shops
  10. give-aways
  11. give-up

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: give-and-take (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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Cite this entry: “give-and-take.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/give-and-take. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.