Offshored

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Relocated company activities or services to a foreign country usually to reduce costs
2. Transferred business functions overseas to take advantage of cheaper labor or resources
3. Shifted certain corporate tasks or production to a location outside the original country to save money

Etymology: "Offshored" is the past tense and past participle of "offshore," and the verb is built from the adjective and adverb "offshore," which joins "off" and "shore." The "off" element goes back to the same root as English "of" and the Germanic word for away from, while "shore" traces back through Old English "scora" and a Proto-Germanic root meaning the land's edge against the water. Together the older sense of "offshore" was simply a position away from the coast, whether a ship sailing out to sea or a wind blowing from land toward the water. The verb's modern sense grew out of that literal meaning. Business use moved the idea from sea to economy: moving work, factories or services to another country sends them, in a sense, across the water to a place beyond the home nation's shore. The word's business meaning is a metaphor from maritime geography, so a term describing ships and winds now describes call centres and manufacturing plants.

Synonyms: relocated, outsourced, subcontracted, transferred, migrated

Antonyms: insourced, localized, retained, kept, hired