Disbenefit |
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Votes: 510
Comments: 8
Added: October 2005
| eywho - 1st March 2006 03:25 |
| In Town Planning sense, dis-benefit has the sense stronger and more direct than " defect" or "shortcoming" but weaker than "adverse impact". For example, a car park has adverse impact on the traffic flow but disbenefit to the air. Nevertheless, "disbenefit " is somehow not commonly use in daily language. |
| Williams - 4th March 2007 23:55 |
| This is not a word that appears in the recognised shorter dictionaries and is not a word that I or my wife (who is very well read) had come across in our combined 95 years on the planet, until it appeared in a local government consultation document about proposed town planning changes. If it is in regular use by town planners, it suggests that they live on a different planet from the men on the streets they purport to plan. |
| doug - 6th November 2007 16:42 |
| good / bad or better / worse. There are plenty of better words to show negativity. |
| Stephen B. Cohen - 3rd January 2008 01:25 |
| Used in Benefit Analysis: For example, a new, limited-access highway may benefit the highway's users, but may disbenefit the businesses that were along the old highway. |
| Englishman - 17th July 2008 16:11 |
| In my long life in the home of English I cannot remember a time when this word was not used! It is an elegant contrast with benefit |
| Laurence and Richard - 25th March 2009 08:53 |
| Disbenefit is the proper term used in economic analysis to mean the opposite of benefit |
| Economist - 17th September 2009 23:51 |
| It is a technical term from welfare economics and public policy analysis. When the government spends money (costs) on a project, there are impacts. These are called "benefits" if they are positive and "disbenefits" if they are negative. The term "disbenefit" was chosen in contrast to "cost" to make a distinction between what you spend and what you get. Outside of technical usage, "disbenefit" can sound contrite and should be avoided. |
| PM - 22nd September 2009 15:02 |
| The proper antonyms to benefit should be drawback or handicap. I suppose I'm not against evoluation of English just the needless creation of words when sufficiently precise terms already exist. |
