- 1取捨、權衡（有得必有失的那種選擇）
A situation where you cannot have both good things at once, so you give up some of one to get more of the other — and you accept that as a fair bargain. A cheaper flight with a long , a faster program that uses more memory, a job with better pay but longer hours: each of those is a trade-off. The heart of the word is the acceptance. You are not complaining and you are not being cheated; you have looked at both sides and chosen. It is very common in business, engineering, science, and policy writing, but ordinary people say it too. Usual patterns: 'a trade-off between speed and accuracy', 'there's always a trade-off', 'you have to accept some trade-offs'. Written with a as a noun (Americans often write 'tradeoff' with none), and as two words when it's the verb: 'trade off cost against quality'. It is not automatically negative — a trade-off can be a good decision, well made.
trade-off 指一種兩件好事不能同時擁有的情況，所以你得放掉一部分，換來另一部分，而且接受這樣的交換是公平的。例如便宜的機票但中途停留很久、跑得快但吃記憶體的程式，或薪水較高但工時較長的工作，這些都是取捨。這個字的核心是「接受」：你不是在抱怨，也不是被騙，而是看過兩邊之後自己選了。它在商業、工程、科學和政策文章裡很常見，但一般人也會說。
常見的說法有「a trade-off between ＿＿ and ＿＿」，例如「a trade-off between speed and accuracy」，也就是速度和準確之間的取捨，還有「there's always a trade-off」。當動詞用時要分開寫，像「trade off ＿＿ against ＿＿」，把某樣東西拿去換另一樣。它不一定是負面的，一個做得好的取捨也可能是很好的決定。
From the word’s history
A noun from the verb phrase trade off.
由動詞片語 trade off 變成名詞。
組成From the phrasal verb 'trade off' — to trade one thing off against another. The noun is that verb phrase frozen, with a hyphen added.
原始詞典資料1 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
trade-offnoun
- 1
Any situation in which the quality or quantity of one thing must be decreased for another to be increased.
- In writing, there's often a trade-off between being concise and being complete.
- Individual episodes are still thrilling and often quite striking, give or take some pitch-black battle scenes. But the gradual ramping up of the plotting that has grown steadily in the past three seasons crossed some invisible Maginot line this year, where the formerly acceptable trade-offs of focus for fun are no longer quite so taken for granted.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。