detriment
Americannoun
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detriments
plural
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loss, damage, disadvantage, or injury.
-
a cause of loss or damage.
noun
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disadvantage or damage; harm; loss
-
a cause of disadvantage or damage
Synonym Usage
See damage.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of detriment
First recorded in 1400–50; late Middle English from Middle French, from Latin dētrīmentum “loss, damage,” from dētrī- ( see detritus) + -mentum -ment
Explanation
Detriment is the hurt or harm as a result of damage, loss, or a bad decision. The developers won the lawsuit, much to the detriment of the people who live near the construction site. The meaning of detriment has not changed much from its roots in the Latin word, detrimentum, which is "a rubbing off, loss, damage, defeat." A detriment is a loss that wears you down. Smoking is a detriment to good health, as is standing in the snow barefooted. To the detriment of the people who clean the floors, we gave the girls scrambled eggs right before gymnastics class.
Vocabulary lists containing detriment
The Book Thief
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Tears of a Tiger
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Britain's Finest Hour Speech - Winston Churchill (1940)
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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:
Profitability is important, she says, but not to the detriment of top-line growth.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 14, 2026
“They probably got over their skis in terms of monetizing the platform at the detriment to user experience, and they’ve reset the growth plan and pivoted back to focusing on user experience,” he said.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 7, 2026
Because of that, experts say there is no detriment to English learning when a child is also exposed to another language.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 24, 2026
“I want to improve myself, but not at the detriment of others,” Cruise tells GQ.
From Salon ● Sep. 17, 2026
But that name turned out to be a detriment rather than an asset to me.
From "Tears of a Tiger" by Sharon M. Draper
And what are the nutrition benefits — and, possible, detriments?
From Salon ● Jan. 17, 2026
The game hadn’t evolved to where it is today, when speed and athleticism are viewed as desired traits, not detriments.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 25, 2023
A founder of the Indian National Congress, he expressed the opinions of many middle-class Indians in 1871 when he wrote on the subject of the benefits and detriments of British rule of India.
From Textbooks ● Dec. 14, 2022
"Such experiences leave a trail of devastation for individuals and their teams and undermine the performance of our parliament to the nation's detriments," said Ms Jenkins, the report's author.
From BBC ● Nov. 30, 2021
In the former the employer is said to “cause” the slave to suffer these detriments, in the latter he is said to come by them.
From Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters by C. H. W. (Claude Hermann Walter) Johns
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
