trade-off
trade-off noun: any situation in which the quality or quantity of one thing must be decreased for another to be increased.
Noun
trade-off (plural trade-offs)
- Any situation in which the quality or quantity of one thing must be decreased for another to be increased.
- In writing, there's often a trade-off between being concise and being complete.
- Individual episodes are still thrilling and often quite striking, give or take some pitch-black battle scenes. But the gradual ramping up of the plotting that has grown steadily in the past three seasons crossed some invisible Maginot line this year, where the formerly acceptable trade-offs of...2019 May 19, Alex McLevy, “The final Game Of Thrones brings a pensive but simple meditation about stories (newbies)”, in The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 22 May 2019
- Synonyms:
- compromise
Synonyms of trade-off
Forms of trade-off
| plural | trade-offs |
|---|---|
| alternative form | tradeoff |
Origin of trade-off
Deverbal from trade off.
Words formed from trade-off
Questions about trade-off
- What does trade-off mean?
- Trade-off means any situation in which the quality or quantity of one thing must be decreased for another to be increased.
- What part of speech is trade-off?
- Trade-off is a noun.
- What is the plural of trade-off?
- The plural of trade-off is trade-offs.
Words near trade-off in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: trade-off (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-trade-off.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Wodencafe-trade-off.wav.
Cite this entry: “trade-off.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/trade-off. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.