frictionless

English

Etymology

From friction +‎ -less.

Pronunciation

  • Audio (Southern England):(file)

Adjective

frictionless (not comparable)

  1. Of or pertaining to lack of friction.
    It would last many years because of its frictionless bearings.
    A hard border is a real possibility, and a frictionless border is almost an oxymoron.
    • 2021 May 19, Paul Stephen, “Our railway in RAIL's next 40 years: Jacqueline Starr”, in RAIL, number 931, page 40:
      In the decade ahead, the story must be one of increasingly frictionless travel.
    • 2025 June 30, Adrienne Matei, “‘Hey man, I’m so sorry for your loss’: should you use AI to text?”, in The Guardian‎[1], →ISSN:
      To her, adding AI into relationships “presupposes inadequacy” in them, and offers a sterile alternative: always saying the right thing, back and forth, frictionless forever.
  2. (finance) Of a transaction or trade, without tariffs and non-tariff barriers.
    • 2018 March 1, Charles Riley, “Brexit dream of 'frictionless' trade with EU is dying”, in CNN Business‎[2]:
      "There can be no frictionless trade outside of the customs union and the single market," said Donald Tusk, president of the council of all 28 EU member states.

Derived terms

Translations

This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.