feedback

From feed + back.

• IPA^(key): /ˈfiːdˌbæk/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

feedback (usually uncountable, plural feedbacks)

1. Critical assessment of a process or activity or of their results.

   Synonyms: estimation, assessment, critique, evaluation

   After you hand in your essays, I will give both grades and feedback.

   • 2014 October 9, Marina Carver, “Study finds Boston police target African-Americans disproportionately”, in CNN‎^[2]:

     “Over the past month, the Department has held three separate meetings with the ACLU to receive feedback and engage the organization in the solutions,” the department said in a statement. “As a result of the meetings, the Department agrees that publishing FIO statistics going forward is necessary, and the Department is working toward personalizing interactions between officers and citizens.”

2. (electronics, cybernetics, control theory) The part of an output signal that is looped back into the input to control or modify a system.
   • 2007, Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain:

     The fact that similar cortical abnormalities can be experimentally induced in monkeys has allowed Michael Merzenich and his colleagues in San Francisco to explore an animal model of focal dystonia, and to demonstrate the abnormal feedback in the sensory loop and the motor misfirings that, once started, grow relentlessly worse.

3. (amplification) The high-pitched howling noise heard when there is a loop between a microphone and a speaker.

   Synonyms: audio feedback, Larsen effect, howlback, howlround

   • 2002, John Griesemer, No One Thinks of Greenland, Picador, →ISBN:

     A loud feedback screech blasted from a speaker on the wall. It was a hailing signal of some kind.

• negative feedback
• positive feedback

• buffering
• feedforward

• → German: Feedback
• → Japanese: フィードバック (fīdobakku)
• → Korean: 피드백 (pideubaek)
• → Polish: feedback
• → Portuguese: feedback
• → Russian: фидбэ́к (fidbɛ́k)
• → Spanish: feedback, → retroalimentación (calque)

feedback (third-person singular simple present feedbacks, present participle feedbacking, simple past and past participle feedbacked)

1. (music) To generate the high-frequency sound by allowing a speaker to cause vibration of the sound generator of a musical instrument connected by an amplifier to the speaker.

   The show ended with a riot of feedbacking guitars.

2. (transitive) To provide informational feedback to.

   His employees feedbacked him a lot more than he wanted.

3. (transitive) To convey by means of specialized communications channel.

   Customers feedbacked their complaints and some praise.

• Some are likely to prefer feed back and its inflected forms feeds back, feeding back, or fed back.

• feedback on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• audio feedback on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

From English feedback.

feedback c (singular definite feedbacken, not used in plural form)

1. feedback (critical evaluation)

• respons
• tilbagemelding
• tilbagekobling

Borrowed from English feedback.

• IPA^(key): /ˈfid.bɛk/, /fitˈbɛk/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: feed‧back

feedback m (uncountable, no diminutive)

1. feedback

Unadapted borrowing from English feedback.

• IPA^(key): /ˈfiːdbæk/, [ˈfiːdbæk]
• Rhymes: -iːdbæk

feedback

1. (jargon) feedback

• “feedback”, in Kielitoimiston sanakirja [Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish]‎^[3] (in Finnish) (online dictionary, continuously updated), Kotimaisten kielten keskuksen verkkojulkaisuja 35, Helsinki: Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskus (Institute for the Languages of Finland), 2004–, retrieved 2 July 2023

Borrowed from English feedback.

• IPA^(key): /fid.bak/

• Audio (France (Toulouse)):

  (file)

feedback m (plural feedbacks)

1. feedback (generic)

• “feedback”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012

Unadapted borrowing from English feedback. First attested in 1976.^[1]

• IPA^(key): /ˈfid.bɛk/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -idbɛk
• Syllabification: feed‧back

feedback m inan

1. feedback (critical assessment of a process or activity or of their results)

   Synonyms: informacja zwrotna, uwaga, opinia zwrotna

• “feedback”, in Polish dictionaries at PWN‎^[4] (in Polish)

• feed-back
• fio de beque (humorous)

Unadapted borrowing from English feedback.

feedback m (plural feedbacks)

1. feedback (assessment on information produced)

   Synonyms: comentário, avaliação, retorno

2. (electronics) feedback (signal that is looped back to control a system within itself)

   Synonyms: retroalimentação, realimentação

3. feedback (howling sound)

   Synonyms: retorno, microfonia

• “feedback”, in Dicionário Aulete Digital (in Portuguese), Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon Editora Digital, 2008–2026
• “feedback”, in Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa (in Portuguese), Lisbon: Priberam, 2008–2026

Unadapted borrowing from English feedback.

feedback n (plural feedbackuri)

1. feedback

• feed-back

Unadapted borrowing from English feedback.

• IPA^(key): /ˈfidbak/ [ˈfið̞.β̞ak]
  • Rhymes: -idbak
• IPA^(key): /fidˈbak/ [fið̞ˈβ̞ak]
  • Rhymes: -ak
• Syllabification: feed‧back

feedback m (plural feedbacks)

1. feedback

   Synonym: retroalimentación

According to Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) prescriptions, unadapted foreign words should be written in italics in a text printed in roman type, and vice versa, and in quotation marks in a manuscript text or when italics are not available. In practice, this RAE prescription is not always followed.

• “feedback”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8.1, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 15 December 2025
• Seco, Manuel; Andrés, Olimpia; Ramos, Gabino (2023), “feedback”, in Diccionario del español actual (in Spanish), third digital edition, Fundación BBVA