adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective

1. 1
   Of a communication channel, subject to loss of signal strength.
2. 2
   Of an electricity transmission line, subject to various forms of power loss.
3. 3
   Of an algorithm for converting or compressing data, reducing the amount of information in data.

   "JPEG is a lossy image compression format."

Adjective

1. 1
   characterized by or causing dissipation of energy wordnet

Antonyms

All antonyms

lossless

Example

More examples

"JPEG is a lossy image compression format."

Etymology

From loss + -y.

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