Meaning & use
lock-in
Last updated
Meanings
noununcountablebusiness
A situation where a customer depends so heavily on one supplier's product that moving to a rival would be expensive, slow, or painful.
Grammar: Usually uncountable: vendor lock-in is a risk; a specific case can be countable (a costly lock-in).
Patterns
- lock-in to something
- lock-in with someone
The company avoided lock-in by storing its files in an open format.
Many small shops complain about lock-in with a single payment provider.
Long contracts create lock-in even when the service is mediocre.
nouncountable or uncountablefinance
An arrangement in which a price, rate, or condition is fixed in advance so that later changes cannot affect it.
Grammar: Often used before a noun or with of: a rate lock-in, the lock-in of a mortgage rate.
Patterns
- the lock-in of something
The bank offered a lock-in of the interest rate for five years.
A price lock-in protected the buyers from a sudden rise in fuel costs.
nouncountableBritishinformal
In Britain and Ireland, an after-hours session in a pub where the doors are shut and the people inside carry on drinking.
Grammar: A countable noun: we had a lock-in last Friday.
The landlord let a few regulars stay for a lock-in after closing time.
Nobody remembers how the lock-in ended, only that the singing was loud.
Word forms
| plural | lock-ins |
|---|
Common combinations
- vendor lock-in
- Choosing open standards reduces the danger of vendor lock-in.
- avoid lock-in
- The school wants to avoid lock-in with one software supplier.
- risk of lock-in
- The risk of lock-in grows every year the data stays on one platform.
- technological lock-in
- Technological lock-in explains why old keyboard layouts survive.
- lock-in effect
- The lock-in effect kept customers loyal despite rising fees.
Synonyms and how they differ
- dependence
- Dependence is the general state of needing something, while lock-in stresses that leaving has a built-in cost created by the supplier or system.
- entrapment
- Entrapment sounds much stronger and suggests deliberate trickery, whereas lock-in can arise quietly from ordinary contracts or habits.
- stickiness
- Stickiness is a marketing word for how hard it is for users to leave, and it sounds positive from the seller's side, unlike the usually critical lock-in.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: lock-in or lockdown?
lock-in vs lockdown
A lockdown is a restriction on movement imposed for safety, not a dependence on a supplier.
Practice
Switching clouds was so costly that the firm admitted it was suffering from vendor ___.
Choose one answer.
Vendor lock-in is the fixed phrase for being trapped with one supplier. Lockdown is about movement restrictions and does not fit.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “lock-in”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.