feedback
feedback Lexical Profile
feedback Game Scores & Validity
• noun
Information, criticism, or reactions given in response to a product, a person's performance of a task, or an event, used as a basis for improvement.
"The professor provided constructive feedback on the students' rough drafts before the final submission."
The return of a fraction of the output signal from an amplifier, microphone, or other circuit to the input of the same system, often producing a high-pitched screeching or humming sound in audio equipment.
"When the speaker stood too close to the amplifier with his microphone, a loud burst of feedback echoed through the auditorium."
A cellular, physiological, or ecological regulatory mechanism in which the output or result of a process influences the rate or activity of the process itself.
"Hormone levels in the human body are largely maintained through complex negative feedback loops."
Word Nuance & Usage
"Feedback" is strictly an uncountable mass noun in standard English; it should not be pluralized as "feedbacks" or preceded by the indefinite article "a" (use "pieces of feedback" or "some feedback" instead).
• Rhymes for feedback
Word Origin & Etymology
Coined in 1920 in the field of radio electronics as a compound of the verb phrase "feed back," referring to the return of a fraction of an output signal to the input; its figurative sense of evaluative response emerged in the 1950s through cybernetics and psychology.