Imbalance

How to spell imbalance

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce imbalance

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does imbalance mean?

1. nounA lack of even or proportional distribution between things that should be equal or in correct relation.

Imbalance in a sentence

• The report exposed a serious imbalance between the company's income and its spending.

• A hormonal imbalance can disrupt sleep and mood for months.

Where does imbalance come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The core of this word is 'balance', which descends from the Latin phrase libra bilanx, describing a scale that has two pans (from bi- 'two' and lanx 'plate' or 'scale pan'). That sense of a two-pan weighing device passed into Old French as 'balance' and entered English in the 1200s, first meaning a weighing instrument and then, by extension, a state of equilibrium where two sides hold steady. The prefix 'im-' here is the negative form of 'in-', meaning 'not' or 'lack of', the same element seen in 'imperfect' and 'impossible'; it shifts to 'im-' before the letter b. So 'imbalance' literally signals an absence of even distribution, a relatively modern formation that became common in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The single 'm' followed by a single 'b' is worth fixing in memory, since the prefix contributes just one m and 'balance' begins the rest of the word.

How the word is built

• im- (variant of in-: not, lack of)
• balance (an even distribution, from Latin bilanx: having two scale pans)