opportunity cost
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.77 in modern English
24
Scrabble Score
15
Letters
6
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The cost of an opportunity forgone (and the loss of the benefits that could be received from that opportunity); the most valuable forgone alternative.
Example Sentences
- "Thanks to business school, I can understand how I've actually paid for this time at home with my family—the opportunity cost of my time, my forgone income, etc."
- "Implicit in this fixation with time is the thesis that the opportunity cost of regular shopping is too high – that the hours spent driving to the better bookstore in the next town can be spent doing something more valuable. […] But as our urban lives have grown more pressed for time, we have diced our opportunity costs finer and finer; from budgeting days or slabs of hours, we have come to rationing minutes."