output

American  

[out-poot] / ˈaʊtˌpʊt /

noun

• outputs
  plural

1. the act of turning out; production.

   the factory's output of cars; artistic output.

2. the quantity or amount produced, as in a given time.

   to increase one's daily output.

3. the material produced or yield; product.

4. the current, voltage, power, or signal produced by an electrical or electronic circuit or device.

5. Computers.

   1. information in a form suitable for transmission from internal to external units of a computer, or to an outside medium.

   2. the process of transferring data from internal storage to an external medium, as paper or microfilm.

6. the power or force produced by a machine.

---

verb (used with or without object)

• outputs,
  present (3rd person singular)
• output,
  past participle,  past
• outputted,
  past participle,  past
• outputting
  present participle

1. Computers. to transfer (information) from internal storage to an external medium.

2. to produce; turn out.

output British  

/ ˈaʊtˌpʊt /

noun

1. the act of production or manufacture

2. Also called: outturn.  the amount produced, as in a given period

   a high weekly output

3. the material produced, manufactured, yielded, etc

4. electronics

   1. the power, voltage, or current delivered by a circuit or component

   2. the point at which the signal is delivered

5. the power, energy, or work produced by an engine or a system

6. computing

   1. the information produced by a computer

   2. the operations and devices involved in producing this information See also input/output

7. (modifier) of or relating to electronic, computer, or other output

   output signal

   output device

   output tax

---

verb

1. computing to cause (data) to be emitted as output

output Scientific  

/ out′pt′ /

1. The energy, power, or work produced by a system or device.

2. The information that a computer produces by processing a specific input.

3. Compare input device

---

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• superoutput
  noun

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• outputs
  plural

Participles

• outputting
  present
• output
  past
• outputted
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• output
  simple
• outputs
  simple
• have output
  perfect
• have outputted
  perfect
• has output
  perfect
• has outputted
  perfect
• am outputting
  progressive
• are outputting
  progressive
• is outputting
  progressive
• have been outputting
  perfect progressive
• has been outputting
  perfect progressive

Past

• output
  simple
• outputted
  simple
• had output
  perfect
• had outputted
  perfect
• was outputting
  progressive
• were outputting
  progressive
• had been outputting
  perfect progressive

Future

• will output
  simple
• will have output
  perfect
• will have outputted
  perfect
• will be outputting
  progressive
• will have been outputting
  perfect progressive

Etymology

Origin of output

First recorded in 1855–60; out- + put

Explanation

If your factory transforms steel into train wheels, your factory's output––what it produces––is train wheels. A country's output is the total quantity of goods it produces. The word input is the opposite of output, but only in the sense of the process––if bananas, milk, and ice cream are the input, the output is a milkshake. But you don't usually talk about input in the aggregate, as something you measure over time for a factory, a company, or a country.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

output outputs outputted outputting

Several European nuclear power plants had to reduce their output or temporarily shut due to summer heatwaves.

From Barron's ● Aug. 28, 2026

France and Switzerland, too, reduced their nuclear output because of high river temperatures or low water levels.

From Barron's ● Aug. 25, 2026

Beaumont’s first phase targets output of 1.1 million metric tons of ammonia annually.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 25, 2026

She added: "A chart that rewards unlicensed AI output would undercut the very basis of the recorded music we exist to represent."

From BBC ● Aug. 25, 2026

The kilns in the neighbouring villages were kept busy firing the bricks, but their output was insufficient, and the carts had to go farther afield, returning dusty and brick-filled.

From "Nectar in a Sieve" by Kamala Markandaya

"Diet holds great promise for controlling the microbiome and its outputs. But to devise effective therapeutic interventions, we need to understand what aspects of the diet control which microbial outputs."

From Science Daily ● Aug. 15, 2026

Brands rushing to Reddit in the hopes of influencing AI outputs are colliding with the platform’s fiercely protective moderators, the WSJ Leadership Institute’s Katie Deighton reports.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026

"It's the time of the year for a farmer because all of your outputs depends on the results of them, the TB tests."

From BBC ● Aug. 2, 2026

Distillation is a technique in which a smaller AI model is trained to mimic the outputs of a larger, more capable one.

From Barron's ● Jul. 22, 2026

Their main concern is paying for inputs and getting the most possible outputs.

From "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan

He had pre-produced and outputted a six hour gaming stream on his YouTube account that he had presented as being live on the night of Natalie's death.

From BBC ● Mar. 24, 2026

An online content creator, much of the case centred on McCullagh's production of a pre-recorded six-hour online gaming stream which he outputted on YouTube on the night of Natalie's murder.

From BBC ● Mar. 23, 2026

They aren’t inkjet enlargements, in which a photographic positive is outputted onto a roll of paper at 300 dots per inch.

From New York Times ● Feb. 2, 2023

So, if experimenters see the telltale unequal pattern of outputted numbers, they have evidence their quantum device calculated something a conventional computer cannot.

From Science Magazine ● Oct. 23, 2019

It was once a grave problem to fix hard returns so that the text outputted to 65 characters per line.

From The Project Gutenberg FAQ 2002 by Jim Tinsley

"In just a few minutes on a laptop, the methods developed allow us to determine whether a GBS experiment is outputting the correct answer and what errors, if any, are present."

From Science Daily ● Dec. 1, 2025

When I’m outputting creatively, that’s what fuels me.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 30, 2025

The Vocaloid software application works on both Windows and Mac computers by taking inputs of melody and Japanese language lyrics and outputting the music with Miku as the vocalist.

From Seattle Times ● Sep. 2, 2023

"At this moment we don't really know how to stop the models outputting information which is wrong or toxic or hateful - and that's a big problem."

From BBC ● May 8, 2023

As Lucretius says, "Better the sunshine of smiles——"' A little outputting of impatient breath from Katharine made him stop.

From The Fifth Queen Crowned by Ford Madox Ford

Related Words

• amount
• crop
• gain
• harvest
• manufacturing
• product
• production
• productivity
• profit
• yield