noun ·2 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   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."

2. 2
   an exchange that occurs as a compromise wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

compromisetradeoff

Example

More examples

"Mechanical advantage is a trade-off."

Etymology

Deverbal from trade off.

Related phrases

space-time trade-offtime tradetime-memory trade-off

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