imbalance
Americannoun
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imbalances
plural
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the state or condition of lacking balance, as in proportion or distribution.
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faulty muscular or glandular coordination.
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of imbalance
Explanation
An imbalance occurs when you have too much of some things and too little of others. If you put so much pepper in your soup that you can't taste the other spices, then you caused an imbalance in your flavoring. It’s easy to remember the meaning of imbalance when you break the word into parts. You might recognize the prefix im- as a way to say “not.” Combine that with the familiar word balance, and you come up with something that is decidedly out of whack, or not balanced. It means that something is out of proportion, such as a trade imbalance between nations, meaning the amount of goods they sell to one another is not equal.
Vocabulary lists containing imbalance
Florida's B.E.S.T. Common Prefixes: in-, im-, il-, ir-
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im-
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Dr. Chowdhury said this imbalance creates a serious risk that conservation programs will miss the places where most insect species actually live.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 9, 2026
They found that models which best predicted the recent warming, as well as the rise in the Earth's energy imbalance, are also the ones with a more sensitive climate.
From BBC ● Sep. 8, 2026
Hyperscalers are issuing so much debt that they may be causing an imbalance at the long end of the yield curve.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 2, 2026
Russian leaders believe that they need to reverse this imbalance, fast, said Sergey Lagodinsky, a German member of the European Parliament and a Russian native.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 31, 2026
The stance is, in the words of University of North Carolina researchers, “a situation of dynamic imbalance and ballistic opportunity.”
From "Seabiscuit: An American Legend" by Laura Hillenbrand
Their varied diets should also buffer them from imbalances in prey populations.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 11, 2026
Beyond promoting economic growth, US priorities this year include dealing with "global imbalances" and sovereign debt challenges.
From Barron's ● Aug. 31, 2026
In the second, those shocks are masking deeper imbalances: Demand is outstripping supply and letting businesses make price increases stick.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 26, 2026
We’ve had water treatment failures, chemical imbalances brought on by malfunction, E. coli contamination, and the people of Flint, Michigan, of course, appreciate the criticality of clean water better than anyone in the country.
From Slate ● Aug. 19, 2026
It is my own feeling that the most successful line of research will be that taken by the men studying enzyme imbalances.
From "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
