diminishing returns
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.35 in modern English
25
Scrabble Score
18
Letters
5
Syllables
11
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A condition in which additional inputs into an organization, project or process produce progressively fewer or lower-quality additional outputs, and may, in extreme cases, cause the total quantity or quality of outputs to decrease.
Example Sentences
- "Brüno was a case of diminishing returns, intermittently amusing but not nearly as bracing or funny as Borat—it didn’t help that Brüno was the most thinly conceived of all his Da Ali G Show characters—and the lead-up to Baron Cohen’s new comedy, The Dictator, made it look like he’d boxed himself into a corner."
- "He added, however, that the system operator is unlikely to use the cellphone alert often, lest Californians start to ignore it. The governor agreed that diminishing returns were a risk."
- "Like a TV show, Zootopia 2 takes a more sprawling, less focused approach—with new characters like conspiracy theorist beaver Nibbles Maplestick (Fortune Feimster) and Lynxley’s sympathetic son Pawbert (Andy Samberg) eating up a lot of screentime with diminishing returns."