Research
Information about performance given so you can improve — formative (on a draft, actionable) vs. summative (final, mostly a record).
Merriam-Webster: “the transmission of evaluative or corrective information about an action, event, or process to the original or controlling source; also: the information so transmitted”, plus the systems sense — the return of output to input for self-correction — and the audio one. First recorded 1918. The engineering origin is the useful part: feedback is information routed back to the thing that produced the output, which is why feedback nobody returns to the author is not feedback.
Merriam-Webster is cited as the dictionary of record: where an entry defines a word rather than a position, a dictionary is the primary source for it. The research usage above is this lexicon’s own.
Deeper treatment: this term also has a full entry in the Business Library.
From the AJG lexicon archive (July 2026).
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Developed by Amit Jain at allfrontierglobal.com · purposed.in · purposed · purposed2 · merchcomp.com · uuka.org
Compiled reference — verify current specifics at the source.
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