Meaning & use
high-yield
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Meanings
adjectivebefore a noun
Giving a large return, such as a big profit from an investment or a large harvest from crops.
Grammar: Usually before a noun: a high-yield crop, high-yield bonds.
Patterns
- a high-yield investment
- high-yield crops
Farmers planted a high-yield variety of rice.
She put her savings into a high-yield account.
High-yield bonds pay more interest but carry more risk.
adjectivebefore a nounfigurative
Especially useful or efficient for the effort put in, said of study topics or actions that give a big payoff.
Grammar: Used figuratively, mostly in education: high-yield topics.
Patterns
- a high-yield topic
The tutor focused on high-yield topics likely to appear in the exam.
Planting trees is a high-yield way to cool a city.
Talking to customers is a high-yield use of your time.
Common combinations
- high-yield savings account
- A high-yield savings account pays more interest than normal ones.
- high-yield bonds
- High-yield bonds are also known as junk bonds.
- high-yield crops
- New high-yield crops helped feed more people.
- high-yield investment
- They searched for a high-yield investment.
- high-yield topics
- Students reviewed high-yield topics first.
Synonyms and how they differ
- profitable
- Profitable means making a profit, while high-yield specifically stresses the size of the return relative to what is put in.
- productive
- Productive describes output in general, whereas high-yield is more tied to a measured return.
- lucrative
- Lucrative suggests the activity makes a lot of money, usually for people, not crops.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: high-yield or high-risk?
high-yield vs high-risk
High-risk means likely to cause loss or danger, which is not the same as giving a high return, though the two often go together.
Practice
Farmers prefer ____ wheat because each field produces more grain.
Choose one answer.
High-yield means producing a large amount. Low-yield is the opposite, and high-cost or high-risk does not describe output.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “high-yield”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.