Antisynergy

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A phenomenon in which combined actions lead to detrimental results rather than beneficial ones occurs when collaboration produces adverse or reducing effects on overall performance
2. An occurrence where the interaction of entities results in less effective outcomes instead of synergetic improvements is indicative of a counterproductive relationship
3. A situation in which the interaction of separate components yields negative outcomes instead of enhancing performance demonstrates a lack of beneficial collaboration

Etymology: "Antisynergy" is built from "anti-", the Greek prefix meaning "against" or "opposite," and "synergy," which comes from Greek "synergia," meaning "working together." Synergy in its general sense is the idea that a combined effort produces more than the sum of its parts, and the new word simply flips that idea around. Where synergy describes components that amplify one another for good, antisynergy describes components that undermine or cancel each other out, so that together they achieve less, or do harm, than they would apart. The word is a transparent coinage rather than an old term with a hidden past. Its meaning follows directly from its two parts, so once you know that "anti-" reverses the sense of what follows it, the word explains itself. It is most often used in fields such as medicine, pharmacology, business, and technology, where two things used together may interfere with each other.