imbalance

American  

[im-bal-uhns] / ɪmˈbæl əns /

noun

1. the state or condition of lacking balance, as in proportion or distribution.

2. faulty muscular or glandular coordination.

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imbalance British  

/ ɪmˈbæləns /

noun

1. a lack of balance, as in emphasis, proportion, etc

   the political imbalance of the programme

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Etymology

Origin of imbalance

First recorded in 1895–1900; im- ² + balance

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.

Example Sentences

As a result, China has gone on to suffer from a severe gender imbalance, with men now outnumbering women by over 30 million.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 13, 2026

The new leadership is more racially mixed than before, though with just one woman in a senior position, the gender imbalance remains.

From BBC • Apr. 13, 2026

Their popularity overshadowed Cranston‘s. Kaczmarkek, who at the time called her TV husband “the heart and soul” of “Malcolm,” called the imbalance “terribly uncomfortable.”

From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 10, 2026

Scientists have long tried to address this imbalance, but it has proven challenging.

From Science Daily • Apr. 3, 2026

Such a list of legitimate apostrophe jobs certainly brings home to us the imbalance of responsibility that exists in the world of punctuation.

From "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" by Author

Related Words

• inequality
• shortcoming