trade off
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
English
[edit]Verb
[edit]trade off (third-person singular simple present trades off, present participle trading off, simple past and past participle traded off)
- (transitive, with for) To choose (something) in exchange for something else, where having both at once is not an available option.
- In the entry-level product category, the engineers had to trade off maximal durability for affordable upfront cost.
- (intransitive, with between or among) To choose among options, where having them all at once is not an available option.
- Part of being a competent engineer is knowing how to trade off appropriately among mutually exclusive options, depending on the specified requirements for each design.