lossy

American

[law-see, los-ee] / ˈlɔ si, ˈlɒs i /

adjective

Electricity.

(of a material or transmission line) causing appreciable loss or dissipation of energy.

lossy British

/ ˈlɒsɪ /

adjective

(of a dielectric material, transmission line, etc) designed to have a high attenuation; dissipating energy Compare lossless

lossy line

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of lossy

First recorded in 1945–50; loss + -y ¹

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:

lossy

“Text is just a lossy representation of the real world,” says Kent Rollins, chief product officer at General Intuition, and former director of the Fortnite ecosystem at Epic Games.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026

However, solar power, batteries and in particular those in electric vehicles, and computers all depend on DC, making lossy AC-to-DC conversion necessary.

From Science Daily ● Apr. 19, 2024

You can still play hi-resolution audio tracks, but that’ll result in lossy streaming, so you’ll want to keep a wired solution around if you’re big on those 24-bit 96kHz files.

From The Verge ● Sep. 1, 2021

Every time lossy video compression is applied to the video, the image quality drops.

From Slate ● Apr. 29, 2019

In order to decrease file sizes significantly, we must employ lossy compression algorithms.

From Library of Congress Workshop on Etexts by Library of Congress

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023