Definition of "disutility" [disutility]

• The state or fact of being useless or counterproductive. (noun)
• Something that is inefficient or counterproductive: an analysis of the relative disutilities of the two plans. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "From the point of view of the workman, it is a 'disutility'; to work is to make a sacrifice of one's leisure and comfort, and wages are a kind of compensation for the sacrifice."
• "In the authors 'view, those decisions are shaped by students' finances, their beliefs about their future earnings, and by the amount of misery - "disutility," in econospeak-that they suffer when they do academic work."
• "A common way of assessing potential dangers if to multiply the probability of something happening, if known, by some measure of the scale of the impact (be it general 'disutility' or a more specific measure such as potential fatalities)."