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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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:
EU and Chinese officials have been locked in talks since June to address Brussels' concerns about the current trade imbalance.
From Barron's ● Oct. 5, 2026
He would like to even out the two countries’ trade imbalance.
From Slate ● Sep. 25, 2026
Mandates can encourage deployment, but they can also inflate electricity prices, due to supply-and-demand imbalance, and stimulate imports.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 10, 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
When I was four, my mother was diagnosed as “clinically depressed” because of a chemical imbalance.
From "The Freedom Writers Diary" by The Freedom Writers
That in itself created imbalances — refiners shifted to diesel “perhaps a little bit too early,” he said.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 22, 2026
Their varied diets should also buffer them from imbalances in prey populations.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 11, 2026
"Those are difficult conversations to have," Josh Lipsky of the Atlantic Council told AFP, referring to the issue of imbalances.
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
But later, after my mother lost her faith in God, that leatherette Bible wound up wedged under a too-short table leg, a way for her to correct the imbalances of life.
From "The Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan
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.
