Word.ws English Dictionary

planned obsolescence

planned obsolescence noun: a policy of deliberately planning or designing a product with a limited useful life, so it will become obsolete or nonfunctional after a certain period.

Noun

planned obsolescence (uncountable)

  1. A policy of deliberately planning or designing a product with a limited useful life, so it will become obsolete or nonfunctional after a certain period.
    • An equally important advantage of a system of planned obsolescence would be its function in providing a new reservoir from which to draw income for the operation of the Government.1932, Bernard London, “Ending the Depression Through Planned Obsolescence”, in The New Prosperity, published 1933, →OCLC
    • And Brooks Stevens, a leading industrial designer, explained obsolescence planning in these terms: “Our whole economy is based on planned obsolescence, and everybody who can read without moving his lips should know it by now. We make good products, we induce people to buy them, and then next year...1960, Vance Packard, quoting Brooks Stevens, The Waste Makers, Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 46

Synonyms of planned obsolescence

Origin of planned obsolescence

Coined by Bernard London in 1932 and popularized in the 1960 book The Waste Makers by Vance Packard.

Questions about planned obsolescence

What does planned obsolescence mean?
Planned obsolescence means a policy of deliberately planning or designing a product with a limited useful life, so it will become obsolete or nonfunctional after a certain period.
What part of speech is planned obsolescence?
Planned obsolescence is a noun.

Words near planned obsolescence in the dictionary

  1. planned economist
  2. planned economists
  3. planned economy
  4. planned language
  5. planned languages
  6. planned obsolescence
  7. planned on
  8. planned out
  9. plannedness
  10. plannee
  11. plannees

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: planned obsolescence (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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