trade-off

• tradeoff

Deverbal from trade off.

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trade-off (plural trade-offs)

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.

   • 2019 May 19, Alex McLevy, “The final Game Of Thrones brings a pensive but simple meditation about stories (newbies)”, in The A.V. Club‎, archived from the original on 22 May 2019:

     Individual episodes are still thrilling and often quite striking, give or take some pitch-black battle scenes. But the gradual ramping up of the plotting that has grown steadily in the past three seasons crossed some invisible Maginot line this year, where the formerly acceptable trade-offs of focus for fun are no longer quite so taken for granted.

   • 2024 June 12, Sir Michael Holden, “A manifesto for our railway to thrive”, in RAIL, number 1011, page 42:

     All of these are of vital importance to the effective functioning of GBR. They all require the judgement of Solomon to handle the myriad and complex trade-offs between running trains and maintaining the railway, and deciding how capacity on any particular route can be optimised with all the competing demands from varying operators to run on it.

• compromise

• off-trade