lossy

[law-see, los-ee] Origin

loss·y

[law-see, los-ee]
adjective Electricity.
(of a material or transmission line) causing appreciable loss or dissipation of energy.

Origin:
1945–50; loss + -y1
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Lossy is always a great word to know.
So is quincunx. Does it mean:
a fool or simpleton; ninny.
an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle.
Collins
World English Dictionary
lossy (ˈlɒsɪ)
 
adj
Compare lossless (of a dielectric material, transmission line, etc) designed to have a high attenuation; dissipating energy: lossy line
 
[C20: from loss]

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
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Etymonline
Word Origin & History

lossy
"characterized by loss," a term in electrical engineering, from loss + -y (2).
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
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FOLDOC
Computing Dictionary

lossy definition

algorithm
A term describing a data compression algorithm which actually reduces the amount of information in the data, rather than just the number of bits used to represent that information. The lost information is usually removed because it is subjectively less important to the quality of the data (usually an image or sound) or because it can be recovered reasonably by interpolation from the remaining data.
MPEG and JPEG are examples of lossy compression techniques.
Opposite: lossless.
(1995-03-29)

The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © Denis Howe 2010 http://foldoc.org
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