Definition of "lossy" []

• Of a communication channel, subject to loss of signal strength (adjective)
• Of an electricity transmission line, subject to various forms of power loss (adjective)
• Reducing the amount of information in data. (adjective)

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• "Most codecs also serve as compressors, so they are "lossy" - they reduce the quality of the information in order to make the file smaller."
• "Hence, compressed formats are also known as lossy formats, since details are lost."
• "JPEG is called a lossy file format, however, because it compresses photos to save disk space."