Counterproductive

//ˌkaʊntəpɹəˈdʌktɪv// adj

adj ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    More of a hindrance than a help.

    "It's most likely that these kinds of cuts to service frequencies, train formations, and service start and finish times would cost more in revenue than they save in cost and would therefore be counterproductive."

Adjective
  1. 1
    tending to hinder the achievement of a goal wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
harmfulbalefulbanefulbarrenbootlesschoking

Example

More examples

"... Otherwise it is (or will be) hard to avoid a counterproductive situation."

Etymology

From counter- + productive.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.